As always lately, the first thing Arthit sees when he comes into the room is Noi’s face in the photograph.
What he really sees is the back of the photograph, since it’s turned toward his swivel chair on the far side of his dented, olive drab steel desk. What he’s actually looking at is a cardboard stiffener with a fold-out triangle to make the frame stand upright. But what he sees is the two of them, ridiculously young and fate-temptingly happy, the immaculate white linen thread of marriage tied loosely around their foreheads. He’d had a couple of drinks for courage before the wedding, and his face is a bright red that’s part alcohol, part blush. Noi’s is alive with mischief. Below the edge of the photo, she had just made a trial grab at the part of him that now belonged exclusively to her. Although of course all of him actually belonged exclusively to her.
As he drags himself in, he doesn’t see the window he fought to get, or the dull, industrial, alley-bisected view it looks out onto, or the rattan cricket on the table, or the couch pillows covered in yellow silk that Noi picked out, or the photographs of himself on the wall, standing next to men-of-the-moment, mostly forgotten now but worth pointing a camera at, back whenever. He doesn’t see the rug he hauled in a year ago, grunting under its weight, because he hated the brown linoleum.
Just the photograph. Just his wife’s face.
Of course he knows that he’s not seeing the other things. He’s stopped seeing them in self-defense, amazed to learn how much sadness inanimate objects can give off, an emotional vapor that says, When I bought that / was given that /put that there, I didn’t know. I thought the world’s natural state was to be whole, I thought it would remain whole.
I thought if anything ever happened to one of us, it would happen to me.
Beside the framed photograph, a stack of work waits for him. Papers he needs to review pointlessly, reports he needs to initial pointlessly, a calendar of pointless meetings he’ll drag himself to, just a little late, so he can sit on the periphery, against the wall instead of at the table, and try to look attentive. Try not to look like a man who has just been hit by a train.
He trudges across the room and sits down with a sigh he doesn’t hear. The chair makes its invariable squeak of complaint, something he has meant to take care of for weeks-a squirt of WD-40, what could be easier? It would just take a second. The can is on top of the filing cabinet, put there at his request by one of the secretaries a million years ago. Picking it up would take more strength than he possesses. He thinks briefly about getting up and throwing the chair through the window. That’s something he can visualize doing. Breaking things. For that he could find strength.
He reads the first sentence on the top page of the stack and then reads it again. Halfway through he goes back to see what the memo’s subject is. It’s got something to do with a new copying loop, a list of people who are to be copied automatically on several sorts of documents, very few of which ever cross his desk. He takes the page, rips it lengthwise down the center, and sits there, holding half of the sheet in each hand, looking right through the photograph.
In the three days since he found the pills buried in the flour, Noi has paled and lightened. She seems to walk more weightlessly, to absorb more light, to carry her pain more easily, as though it were a cloak she can lift from her shoulders when the weight becomes too much for her. Today, as she stood at the stove heating the water for his coffee, he had the sense that if he squinted hard enough, he could see the stove through her. That she was some sort of colored projection in the air.
That she was already beginning to fade.
Of course, the impulse, the instinct, is to hold on, to wrap his arms around her and anchor her. To do whatever it takes to keep her beside him. But to do that would be to keep her in her pain, the smoldering in her nervous system that will simply get worse until she bursts into flame like a paper doll. Fire no one can put out. Won’t it be better if she simply goes to sleep?
Of course it would. Of course it wouldn’t.
That morning, as he drank his coffee, trying to act the way he acted every morning-as though this were just the beginning of another day in an infinite progression of days-Noi pulled her chair around from the side of the table where she usually sits and put it beside his. She wound her arms around his neck and leaned against him. He sat there cup in hand, inhaling the smell of her shampoo, feeling the heat from her skin, listening to the flow of her breath and watching the room ripple through the tears in his eyes, while his heart slammed against his ribs like a fist. They sat there until the coffee was cold. Neither of them spoke a word.
His phone rings.
He looks at it as he might look at a scorpion on his desk. It continues to ring. Finally he drops the scrap of paper in his left hand and reaches for the receiver, seeing the glint of his wedding ring. Picks up the receiver and says his name.
“This is Thanom,” says the voice on the other end, a voice with some snap to it. “We need to talk. Now. Come up here.”
Arthit hangs up the phone, thinking, Poke.
“I’VE JUST HAD an interesting chat,” Thanom says as Arthit comes through the door. Today Thanom is in his usual uniform, not the ceremonial outfit Poke had described him wearing at Pan’s fund-raiser. He has a short, flattened nose and an upper lip that’s longer than the nose above it. Those features, plus round black eyes as expressive as bullet holes, have always made him look to Arthit like a monkey. But he’s not a monkey one should underestimate. Thanom has a perpetually wet index finger raised to detect the slightest shift in the political winds.
“Really,” Arthit says. “A chat with whom?” He has not been invited to sit.
Thanom gives a tug at the left point of his collar. “A friend of yours. The farang who’s writing Pan’s biography. What’s his name?”
“Rafferty,” Arthit says. “More an acquaintance than a friend.”
“Is that so,” Thanom says, not making it a question. “I’d heard otherwise.”
“Obviously I have no way of knowing what you’ve heard.”
Arthit’s tone sharpens the interest in Thanom’s face, but he puts it aside for the moment to pursue his topic. “I’m apparently on some sort of list of people he’s supposed to talk to about Pan, although I can’t imagine why.”
Arthit says, “Who gave him the list?”
Thanom leans back in his chair and regards Arthit speculatively. “That’s an excellent question. I should have asked it.”
“You’ve been behind a desk for a while,” Arthit says, pleased to see the spots of red appear on Thanom’s cheeks. “Focused on more important things than nuts and bolts. First-year-patrolman stuff.”
“No, no,” Thanom says between lips that are stretched tight enough to snap. “A really good policeman never forgets the basics.”
Arthit says, “I couldn’t agree with you more.”
Arthit can practically see Thanom make an imaginary mark: One to get even for. “Did he tell you who gave him the list?”
“I don’t know him as well as you think I do.”
“It’s been a while since we talked, hasn’t it?” Thanom says. “It’s a shame my responsibilities don’t give me more time with my men. One thing about your friend interested me. He kept asking to see the files on Pan. When I said it wasn’t possible, he asked whether they were even accessible. As though we might have misplaced them somehow.”
“That is interesting.”
Thanom lifts his tie and glances at it, as though he expects to find a stain. “Any idea where he might have gotten the idea?”
“None. Is it true?”
Thanom’s eyes come up. “Of course not. We don’t misplace files.”
“That’s a relief,” Arthit says. “Since we’re the institutional memory of law and order in Bangkok and all that.”
“You don’t know where he could have picked up such a notion? Your friend, I mean.”
“Acquaintance. No, of course not. But if he’s got whole lists of people to talk to, maybe one of them suggested something of the sort.”
“Yes, yes,” Thanom says, holding up a hand. “And you personally,” he says. He squeezes some feeling into his voice, as persuasive as food coloring. “How are you bearing up?”
Arthit has no idea how Thanom knows anything is wrong with Noi. “Beating against the tide,” he says, “as we all do.”
“Do we?” Thanom says, standing to signal the end of the conversation. “I don’t think so. I think some of us learn to ride it.”
FOR PURPOSES OF his work, Rafferty’s favorite kind of people are the ones who are dumber than they think they are. The policeman, Thanom, had practically redefined the category. Yes, of course he’d be happy to help Rafferty, especially in light of the call he’d received. Rafferty certainly had prominent friends, didn’t he? Heh, heh. And the time was long overdue for a book about this disgusting man, this scab on the Bangkok social scene. Practically a common criminal, for all the flash and the…um, amazing girls. Here Thanom had actually stopped talking long enough to press the side of his index finger against his upper lip, blotting sweat Rafferty couldn’t see.
But of course Rafferty knew a few things about beauty himself, didn’t he? Thanom said when his finger was out of the way, considering the rare orchid Rafferty had been parading at the event at Pan’s house. And then Thanom brandished the official elbow: Amazing how resilient women are, isn’t it? he asked. Take them out of the mud and six months later they look like they’ve never been dirty a moment in their lives. Not that Thanom thinks of Patpong as mud, of course. It’s just regrettable that there aren’t better career choices for these flowers of the northeast. And how fortunate she was, Rose, to find a good man to rescue her, one who wouldn’t object to…well, to all that. But change was coming. Surely Rafferty could feel it in the air, after-here Thanom glanced down at a single piece of paper sitting in regal splendor on his desk-after three years and nine months in the kingdom. Why, he said with an admiring shake of the head, you must feel half Thai yourself.
And no, he didn’t know how Pan had gotten his start, how he had climbed from thugdom to the top of the industrial heap, or even-for sure-that there was any thugdom back there in the first place. “Common criminal” had just been a figure of speech based on, you know, how he dresses and behaves in public. There were rumors, of course. There were always rumors wherever there were envious people, but nothing official. And of course he’d be delighted to let Rafferty look at the official records, especially considering who had called him to suggest that he find time for this meeting, nothing would make him happier, but he would have to exceed his authority to do so. No matter how high you rise, there’s always someone higher, isn’t there? Although Rafferty, as a freelance writer with two-no, three-books to his credit and another one in the pipeline (isn’t that the term you use, “pipeline”?), yes, Rafferty probably lives a much freer and less constrained life than a simple civil servant. How I envy you that freedom as I sit chained to this desk all day, working for the people’s good.
And now you’ve got this fascinating project about one of Bangkok’s most…uh, visible citizens.
And I’d like nothing better than to show you the files, but it’s impossible. Just procedure, rules and regulations, you know. But of course all of Pan’s records are accessible. The police didn’t lose records. There were backups of backups of backups. To purge anything, even something inconsequential, would be a vast enterprise, requiring hundreds of man-hours. But nothing of that kind had happened in Pan’s case. The records are there, but unavailable, I’m sorry to say.
By now Thanom had taken the paper clip off the sheets and was flicking one end of it with an index finger to make it spin. The activity had the unfortunate effect of making him look even more like a monkey, one who is on the verge of inventing a tool but probably won’t. When Rafferty asks him about Pan’s political aspirations, the paper clip sails off the desk and lands in Rafferty’s lap.
On the street, having wasted much of his morning and with yet another interview in front of him, Rafferty asks himself again: What do they actually want?
SEVERAL HOURS LATER Arthit has made a third improvement to his new paper-plane design when someone knocks on his door. Elaborately folded official reports, symmetrically streamlined and sharply pointed, most of them with a downturned nose borrowed from the Concorde, litter the carpet. The nose looks good, but it seems to impair the lift a good paper plane needs, so Arthit has just counterweighted the tail with a staple and launched it across the room.
He doesn’t bother to tell whoever it is to come in.
Arthit doesn’t have anything as grand as a secretary, but he has access to a pool of women with widely varying skill levels. The one who comes through the door is his favorite: in her sixties, dressed and made up like a nineteen-year-old, she calls herself Brigitte, after Brigitte Bardot. Except for Arthit she is probably the only person in the station who remembers Bardot in all her pouting, carnal glory.
“For you,” she says. She has an envelope in her hand.
“So I assumed,” Arthit says. “Since this is the office you brought it to. What is it?”
“I don’t know,” Brigitte says, although her eyes say she does. “It’s sealed.”
“Unseal it, then. Unseal it and read it to me.”
Brigitte shifts from foot to foot, obviously wishing she were elsewhere. “I’m not sure I should.”
“Whoever sent it to me probably wants me to know what it says, right?”
“Well…I suppose.”
“Then open it and read it to me. I can promise you that if you don’t, it will probably be weeks before I get around to opening it myself. I have far too much on my hands.” He rips out another page of another report and folds it lengthwise, already visualizing a triangular tuck in the tail section that might make the staple redundant. Staples seem like cheating.
“Well.” Brigitte chews the inside of her cheek. Then she opens the envelope, which is not in fact sealed; the flap has merely been slipped inside. “It’s…um, it’s a Form 74.”
“Really. And a Form 74 is?”
“Leave. It’s the form granting compassionate leave.”
“Ah,” Arthit says. He creases the page with his thumbnail to sharpen the fold. “Does it say when the leave begins?”
“It starts today,” Brigitte says. She blinks rapidly, and for a moment Arthit is afraid she will burst into tears. “In fact, it starts now.”
Arthit says, “Mmm-hmm.” He launches the plane, which sails across the room rewardingly. “And is there anything about how long this compassion will last?”
“Until further notice,” Brigitte says.
“That’s a very generous serving of compassion,” Arthit says. “Definitely something to remember.”
I hope you know what a big favor this is,” grumbles the man behind the desk. Through the floor-to-ceiling window with the desk positioned in its center, Rafferty sees the silvered windows of the office tower across the street.
“And I hope you know how much I appreciate it,” Rafferty says to Wichat with the smallest smile he can manage. “The people who want this book written feel you might have a special perspective on Pan.”
“I was around,” Wichat says. His shoulders are hunched and high, and it looks protective. “I was just a foot soldier then, but I was around.”
“That’s not what I hear. I hear you were already on the way up.”
Wichat shakes his head. “The big guy then was Chai. He was generous with his men. He took care of me. I did what he needed done, and he took care of me.” Wichat tilts the chair back, dangerously close to the plate glass behind him.
“Doesn’t that scare you? It’s, what, twenty-eight stories down?”
Wichat says, “Nothing scares me.”
“Well, lucky you. Did anything scare Pan?”
“If it did, he didn’t show it. He could have been pissing his pants, but he looked like something carved into that wall of his. Nothing showed except what he wanted to show. Had a way of bringing down the corners of his mouth so hard they almost touched. Scared the shit out of people.”
“You knew him when he made the move, right? The move to the massage parlors.”
“The Mound of Venus,” Wichat says lightly, as though he’s been asked an unexpectedly easy question. “Sure.”
“Where’d he get the money?”
Wichat picks up a battered pack of cigarettes and tweezes one out between his first and second fingers. He puts it in his mouth and picks up a gold lighter. “Trying to quit,” he says.
“Yeah, well, lighting one is a surefire method.”
“I don’t light as many as I used to,” Wichat says, blowing a plume of smoke across the desk. “Don’t smoke them so far down either.”
“Where’d he get the money?”
“He didn’t need money. How do I know my name isn’t going to be all over your book?”
“If it is, you can kill me.”
“Funny,” Wichat says dourly. “No names, got it?”
“Got it.”
“I wouldn’t tell you shit if you didn’t have so much fucking weight behind you.”
“As I said, I appreciate it. Where’d he get-”
“I told you,” Wichat snaps. “He already had some. And he didn’t need as much as you’d probably think. He got the first Mound pretty much free, just the old gun-to-the-head negotiation. The guy who owned it had made the wrong decisions about who to be friends with. It would have been a small funeral. So he signed it over to Pan for maybe enough baht to buy a week’s worth of chewing gum, and Pan fixed the place up.”
“And then?”
“And then he made a bunch of money from the first Mound and opened the others. Business, right? Make profit and reinvest it. Selling pad thai, selling pussy. Same-same, you know?”
“What else?”
Wichat reaches up and passes a palm over the surface of his oily hair. Then he makes a palm print on the desk’s smooth surface and looks down at it as though evaluating its worth as evidence. “What else, what else.” He drags on the cigarette again and examines it, obviously thinking about what he’s going to say next. “Two things,” he says. “You didn’t hear this from me, but there were two things.” He glares at the half-smoked cigarette, stubs it out, and drops it in the ashtray. “Hard not to pick these things up and light them later, you know? Especially when you were poor once.”
“Get a jar of water,” Rafferty says. “Drop them into it.”
Wichat’s eyes widen slightly. His complexion is rough and pitted. He must have had terrible acne as a kid. Acne plus poverty; if Rafferty didn’t know the man was a killer and perhaps worse, he might even feel sorry for him.
“Hang on,” Wichat says. He picks up his phone and punches a single number. “Get me a jar of water and bring it in here. No, not a glass. If I wanted a glass, I would have asked for a glass. A jar, and a coaster to go under it. A little more than half full. No lid.” He hangs up. To Rafferty he says, “Good idea.”
“You were about to tell me two things.”
“Bunch of half-smoked cigarettes floating around, that’s going to stink.”
“Yeah. And?”
“Good idea.” His eyes drop to the surface of the desk, scanning it as though he’s looking for an objection to what he’s about to do. “Two things,” he says. “First, the Mounds of Venus weren’t the whole story, okay? He also owned a bunch of handcuff houses, you know handcuff houses?”
“Pretend I don’t.”
“Houses where the girls aren’t…eager, you know? Where they’re handcuffed to the bed. Some guys like that. They like to punch the girls a little, too, a few of them. So Pan had, I don’t know, maybe four or five of those places. Only Burmese girls, trucked in. He wouldn’t use Thai girls, they had to be Burmese.”
“Are you sure of this?”
“You’ve got to be kidding me. This is dangerous stuff I’m telling you. I don’t want to know it myself. You think I’d make it up?”
“Pan acts like prostitutes are his fallen sisters.”
“Pan’s one of the world’s great liars.” Wichat brings both hands up, scrubbing the air to erase the remark. “But the Thai girls, the ones who worked in the Mounds? He took good care of them. They got paid good, and they got time off and everything. I even heard he takes care of some girls who got sick. But that’s just Thais, you understand? Just Isaan. The Burmese, he treated them like shit.”
“And the second thing?”
“You seen his hands?”
“You mean the scars?”
“Yeah. You’ve never seen him in a short-sleeved shirt because those burns, they go all the way up to his shoulders and even the front of his chest. It looks like he dived headfirst into a fire to pull something out. He disappeared for a couple of months, and when he came back, he had those scars. He wouldn’t talk about them, but it was only about six months later he got his first factory and started closing down the whorehouses.”
“A fire,” Rafferty says.
“Yeah. He came through some sort of fire, and then he was a different guy.”
“What year?”
“Oh, shit, who knows? He was still closing down the knock shops, so-”
The office door opens, and an exquisite young woman comes in carrying a jar of water. The jar has a label that says “Jif” on it.
“Oh, come on,” Wichat says angrily. “It’s bad enough to have a fucking jar on my desk without the whole world knowing what kind of peanut butter I eat. Peel that thing off.”
“Yes, sir,” the girl says. She wears a pale salmon-colored business-formal office suit, all in silk. Wichat watches her rear end as she goes back out.
“More butt than brains,” Wichat says admiringly.
Rafferty says, “The year.”
A heavy blink. “Yeah. Like I said, he still had one of the Mounds, or maybe two. Must have been-this is a guess-1993? Maybe ’94. In there somewhere.”
“Do you have anything to do with him now?” Rafferty asks. “With Pan?”
Wichat picks up the pack of cigarettes again. “I don’t care who called me about you,” he says. “Just pretend you didn’t ask that question.”
THE SIDEWALK IS at full bake, heat ripples so pronounced that pedestrians look like he’s seeing them underwater. Rafferty ducks into an air-conditioned drugstore, one in a British chain that’s established itself in Bangkok’s high-rent commercial districts. He pulls out the cell phone and dials the number from memory.
“I need to access the morgue at the Bangkok Sun,” he says without returning the greeting from the other end. “Somebody has to call and set it up.”
“You can’t get in yourself?” It is the first man, the man from the car again. His speech is still mush-thick, but at least it’s understandable.
“Sure I can get in myself. I’ll make a request, and then the request will get processed, and then they’ll let me in, and it’ll be the middle of next week. You guys want to sit around playing blackjack or whatever you do while I go through all that, or you want to move things along?”
“How’d you do with the cop?”
“I did better with the crook. It’ll be in my report.”
“Give me a preview.”
“I think I’ll wait,” Rafferty says, “until I’m talking to someone who matters.”
“You’re just making it easier,” the man says.
“If it wasn’t easy, you wouldn’t be able to do it.”
A pause, although Rafferty can hear the breathing on the other end of the line. Then the man says, “How long will it take you to get there?”
“Twenty, thirty minutes.”
“It’ll be set up.” The man disconnects.
Thirty-five minutes later, Rafferty discovers he’s in luck. Both 1993 and 1994 have been computerized and cross-indexed. It takes him less than an hour to find fires.
Five show promise. Two of them are the most melancholy of all crimes, the burning of a slum that had the misfortune to occupy land earmarked for more profitable purposes. People died in one of these fires. Both had been euphemistically designated as accidental. Then there are two house fires that destroyed or damaged the homes of the powerful. Nobody died, so the fires were probably just attention-getters. The fifth is a factory conflagration, a virtual explosion of highly flammable materials in a facility that turned out stuffed animals for an American toy maker. The fire had happened around 3:00 A.M. during a “ghost shift,” a shift the American company knew nothing about. After the workers on the night shift left, the ghost-shift workers were brought in to use inferior materials to bootleg identical animals for direct sale at the bazaars of Asia. One of the differences between the superior and the inferior materials was that the inferior materials weren’t fireproofed.
The fire killed one hundred twenty-one people. The factory’s windows were barred, and the iron doors had been locked from the outside. People had been stacked in front of the doors in smoldering piles, like kindling. Some had died with their arms protruding between the bars on the windows, reaching frantically for the world. The company that had rented the factory to the Americans had proved to be a shell corporation owned by another shell corporation. No one who supervised the ghost shift had been found. No one had ever been charged.
Rafferty prints out all five stories. Each of the pieces ultimately dithers off into the vague language the Thai police use to describe their lack of progress in an investigation that’s aimed directly at somewhere they’re not going to be allowed to go. And there’s no doubt there are heavyweights behind at least some of the fires. The slums were burned to make way for buildings, the houses probably burned as warnings, and the toy factory burned through inhuman stupidity, coupled with greed for yet more profit.
The odds were good that Pan had been involved in one of them. And Rafferty would guess it was one of the ones that involved death, given the magnitude of the favors he had been granted.
Rafferty had misquoted Balzac: Behind every great fortune is a great crime. Pan’s fortune might have begun in fire.
THE TIME CRAWLS past.
Arthit refuses to go home early. He doesn’t want to explain to Noi that he has effectively been suspended from the force. She’ll take the blame, knowing that his work is the only thing he has now. She doesn’t need the guilt.
So he does something he’s never been good at: He wastes time. He’s been busy his entire adult life. He doesn’t take vacations-something he regrets now; he should have taken Noi to Hawaii, to Los Angeles, to Tahiti-somewhere that would have made her happy. He should have done a million things, but he didn’t. He was who he was, and she had loved him-she still loves him-anyway.
He spends half an hour trying out pens in a stationery store, writing the names of everyone he knows, including Noi’s doctors. He browses shelves of books he wouldn’t read if they materialized one morning under his pillow. He walks through unfamiliar neighborhoods, seeing some of Bangkok’s remaining small villages, seeing how the people stiffen and grow quiet at the sight of his uniform. Tasting the bitterness in the back of his throat that it should be so.
He thumbs through stacks of bootleg DVDs, eyed nervously by sidewalk vendors who yanked the albums of pornography out of sight at his approach. To his immense surprise, he finds a film by Buster Keaton, Sherlock Jr., that he’s never seen. There it is, sandwiched in between more usual titles like Terminator 48 and Revolving Door of the Dead. Noi loves Keaton and his modern disciple, Jackie Chan. When he tries to pay for the movie, the vendor waves his money off, but Arthit takes a thousand-baht note, puts it on the table, and slams a DVD case on top of it, harder than he had intended to. With the Keaton in a plastic bag, he trudges off, ashamed to be dressed as a policeman.
He thinks about calling Rafferty, but what would he say? He doesn’t know how to ask for help, and even if he did, he can’t imagine what help Rafferty could offer. Rafferty has more than enough to deal with now. Struck by the thought, he stops and dials Kosit.
“How’s Poke doing?” he asks.
“You mean other than being outmatched and outweighed and not having any idea what to do about it?”
Arthit says, “Right.”
“This is stupid,” Kosit says. “You’re worried about Poke, and Poke’s worried about you. Why don’t you talk to each other?”
“Because I can’t help him.”
“And vice versa. So let me make a suggestion.”
“Go ahead.”
“Get drunk together. Get drunk and sloppy and say a bunch of stuff you’ll regret tomorrow. You’ll both feel better.”
“Go catch a crook,” Arthit says, and hangs up.
But the talk has lifted his spirits slightly. He dials Rafferty’s cell and gets no answer. He checks his watch-4:45. Close enough, and he’s got the Buster Keaton to distract her from the fact that he’s half an hour early.
When he goes into the house, he automatically enters it his new way. The house is essentially a rectangle. The front door opens directly into the living room, which stretches the full width of the house. To the right is the hallway that leads to the two bedrooms and the bathrooms that adjoin them. The hallway ends in the kitchen. To the left is the dining room, which opens into a small breakfast nook that in turn opens into the kitchen. For the past few months, since Noi’s pain took its quantum leap, he’s gone to the left, through the dining room, so he won’t wake her if she’s asleep.
He kicks off his shoes just inside the front door and pads through the silent living room, smelling the lemon scent of the spray wax Noi uses anywhere there’s a square foot of exposed wood. Without slowing down, he drops the Keaton DVD, still in its plastic bag, next to the cascade of unopened mail on the dining-room table, and goes through the nook and into the kitchen. As he comes into the warm, yellow room, as he unbuckles his gun belt and puts it on the table, his stockinged foot hits something slippery, and he looks down at the floor to see a spill of flour.
His heart literally stops.
Then it kicks itself back into life with tremendous force, and he stands there with it thumping in his ears, staring down at a sifting of flour across the tile, as clean and innocent as a dusting of snow.
Feeling like a man walking against a stiff wind, Arthit forces himself across the kitchen and into the hallway, where he stops, two steps in, and looks at the envelope taped to the closed bedroom door.
The tail is wearing a yellow shirt.
He’s been back there for blocks now. Rafferty has glimpsed him three times as he did experimental zigzags between boulevards and sois. He thinks it might be time to get a look at his shadow’s face, for future reference.
The office building is unremarkable, neither new nor old, certainly not architecturally distinctive, and there’s not a soul in it Rafferty knows. He enters the lobby anyway, walking with the brisk purpose of someone who actually has a destination. Without looking around, he pushes the call button for the elevator and waits. When it comes, he turns to face front as he punches the button for the sixth floor. He doesn’t see the yellow shirt as the doors close.
He gets off on the sixth floor, trots down a couple of flights on the fire stairs, and hits the button for the elevator again. He rides it down to the underground parking garage, which opens not onto Silom but onto a small cross street. Up the slope of the exit ramp and then a quick right, away from Silom. A short jog brings him to an alley, which he takes to the next little soi, one that will lead him back down to Silom. He crosses it and takes it to Silom, then crosses that and waits on the sidewalk, watching the building he just went into.
Looking for someone else who’s watching it.
And almost misses him, because he’s looking for yellow, and what he finally sees is navy blue, a dark T-shirt that says BAJA CALIFORNIA on it. The man in blue is short but broad-shouldered, with medium-length hair that’s been parted in the middle and then gooped with mousse to make it fall in spiky curls over his forehead. A small soul patch clings to his lower lip with all the uncertainty of a misplaced comma.
No yellow shirt. Is he being double-teamed?
Rafferty watches for a few more minutes, just to make certain that Yellow Shirt isn’t around, then turns and follows the flow on the sidewalk until he gets to a recessed doorway, leading into a shop that sells fantasy underwear. Rose laughed out loud at the display window once, although Rafferty still sneaks a look at it now and then.
He punches a number into his cell, waits a moment, and then says, “Floyd. It’s Poke. I need a favor.”
“Why am I not surprised?” says Floyd Preece.
“It’s not a conventional favor, Floyd. There’s money in it.” He looks down the street and doesn’t see either the blue shirt or the yellow one. Blue Shirt worries him a little, because he’d gone unnoticed the whole time Rafferty was isolating Mr. Yellow. The last thing he needs right now is to be followed by someone with real skills.
“How much?” Floyd Preece is a freelance journalist hanging on in Bangkok by his badly chewed fingernails. He’s a first-class investigative reporter, but his talent is significantly outweighed by an avid enthusiasm for controlled substances and a total lack of interpersonal skills. Preece has never crossed a bridge he didn’t burn behind him, and he’s now living in a thin-towel, short-time hotel and maybe six months away from having to teach English, which is the wrong end of the rainbow altogether. Nobody in Bangkok will work with him, but he’s got the gifts Rafferty needs right now.
“If you get me what I want, five hundred U.S. If you don’t, two-fifty for trying.”
“Sounds low.”
“You don’t even know what it is yet.”
“Still sounds low.” There is a pause and the scraping of one of the wooden matches Preece favors, and Rafferty listens to the man suck a cigar into life. “You landed the whale, didn’t you? Mr. Pick His Nose in Public himself. Got to be a big fat advance there. How much did you get?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t checked. Okay, a thousand if you get it, five hundred if you don’t, and if that’s not enough, I’ve got other numbers in my speed dial.”
“I’ll need the five up front.” Another big, wet inhale, followed by a muted cough.
“You’ll get half of it, later tonight or tomorrow morning. I’ll call and tell you where we can meet. Have you got a pencil?”
“Sure. But I need-”
“I don’t care what you need, what you’re getting is two-fifty up front. Now, take this down and get it right, okay? I haven’t got time to repeat it.” Up the street, maybe two-thirds of a block away, he catches a glimpse of the yellow shirt. He backs farther into the doorway and gives Preece the dates and details of the fires. “I’m most interested in the slum fire where there were fatalities and in the factory.”
“This for the book?”
“That doesn’t concern you-”
“-’cause if it is, you’re really pitching me low.”
“Yes or no, Floyd? Before I count to three. One…two…”
“Okay, okay. Jeez. I thought we were friends.”
Rafferty says, “You did? Well, good, then this will clarify things. What I want is everything you can get, but especially this: Who built the new buildings on the sites of the slums that burned, and who owned the factory? Both before and after the fire, if there was enough of it left to sell.” The yellow shirt is gone again.
“I remember it,” Preece said. “Went out there, tried to get some pix to sell. Brought along a stuffed bunny, put it on the dirt in the foreground, and shot past it. Used a wide-angle for depth of field. Like irony, you know? Building was solid concrete. Not much damage, except to the stuff inside. And the people, of course.”
“Right, the people.”
“If it turns out the fire has anything to do with your guy, you should look at these pix. I’d let you have a couple for the right price. Great story angle, you know? Up from the flames and all that.”
“Listen, I also want to know if anyone died in either of those fires who shouldn’t have been there. Somebody with some rank, somebody who didn’t belong.”
“Got it.”
“Tell you what,” Rafferty says, feeling a prickle of guilt. Preece is almost at the stage where he’ll have to start reusing toothpicks. “We’ll make this a sliding scale. I’ll pay you the thousand if you get me the basics. Anything past that, I’ll pay you more, up to a total of twenty-five hundred.”
“Why?” Preece’s voice is sharpened by suspicion.
“Because we’re friends. And because I’m in a hurry. I need this like day after tomorrow at the latest, but call me anytime you get anything good. And, Floyd. Be a little careful, okay?”
“Oh, come on.” Another draw on the cigar. “Bangkok is my beat.”
“Fine. But keep your eyes open.” Rafferty disconnects.
At the edge of the doorway, he looks back up the street. No followers he can identify. He turns to continue in the direction he’d been going in, and there’s Mr. Yellow, flanked by two others. Both of the others are wearing suit jackets, and their hands are thrust into their jacket pockets.
“You haven’t been good,” says the man in yellow.
“Do we know each other?” Rafferty asks.
“Good question,” the man in yellow says. “You know how a scientist looks at a bug? He gets to know the bug pretty well, but does the bug know him?”
“Shoot me,” Rafferty says, “but spare me the metaphors.”
“Come on. We’ve got to talk. You walk next to me, okay? And Mr. Left and Mr. Right will follow us so they can shoot you and disappear quickly if they have to.” He puts a hand on Rafferty’s arm, which Rafferty shrugs off, but to no effect-the man grabs him again.
Rafferty says, “I am so fucking sick of this.”
“You’ve been making me look bad,” the man says. He’s average height for a Thai, maybe five foot nine, a little meaty, with a receding hairline that gives him a thinker’s forehead. A pair of round, black, resolutely opaque sunglasses straddles a shapeless, fleshy nose. A few hairs straggle despairingly across his upper lip as though they’ve slowed to wait for the others to catch up.
“Hard to believe anyone could make you look bad,” Rafferty says. “Where are we going?”
“Right here.” The man opens the door to a large black SUV that Rafferty recognizes, his stomach clenching like a fist, as the one that had been idling in front of Pan’s Mesopotamian wall. “Get in,” Yellow Shirt says, holding wide the rear door.
“I’d rather not.”
“Okay, then, we’ll kill you.”
“And if I get in?”
The man in the yellow shirt smiles. “Wait and see.”
Rafferty climbs up onto the step that will take him into the SUV’s backseat, and his cell phone vibrates in his pocket. “Hold it,” he says, pulling it out.
The man’s hand is immediately on Rafferty’s wrist. “Put that back. Now.”
The readout says ARTHIT.
“Whoever it is,” the man in the yellow shirt says, “you can talk to him later.” And he plucks the phone out of Rafferty’s hand. It’s a very fast, very precise move.
Rafferty says, “Hey,” but someone pushes him hard, between the shoulder blades, and he lurches face-first through the door, cracking his shins on the second step. He lands on the leather backseat and is pushing himself up when the man in the yellow shirt, who is now in the front seat, points a small silvery automatic at him over the seat back.
“Just sit up,” he says. Rafferty sees his own face reflected in the dark glasses. He looks frightened. “In the middle. Don’t do anything stupid.”
Rafferty does as he’s told, and seconds later Mr. Left and Mr. Right climb into the car on either side of him. For a moment they sit there in silence, and Rafferty listens to the engine ticking as it cools. The tinted windows make them invisible from the sidewalk, but he doesn’t think they’d have shut down the engine if the plan called for them to shove a dead man out of the car and peel off into traffic.
“You’re not taking us seriously,” says Yellow Shirt. He looks at the phone. “Who’s Arthit?”
“A friend.”
“If he’s a friend, he’ll wait. I’m running out of patience with you. We called to tell you not to write the book. We did that little show outside Pan’s place. But here you are, running around and talking to people. As I said, it makes me look bad. So here we are again.” He waits.
Rafferty feels like the slowest person in the car. It hadn’t occurred to him that he was dealing with the other side. He’d half figured that the ones who warned him away from the book had been Pan’s guys, despite Pan’s denial, and that they’d be put on hold after he and Pan had their little talk. “What do you want me to say?” he asks.
“Nothing. And I want you to do nothing, and I mean nothing. No more meetings, no more conversations, no more research. This is the third time we’ve had to interact. The fourth time you’ll die. Understand?”
“Yes.”
“Are you right-handed or left?”
There is no way to know how to answer this question. Rafferty makes a blind choice. “Left.”
“See how you are?” Yellow Shirt says sadly. “I’ve been watching you, remember? Look at this gun.” He lifts it from the seat back and moves it slowly to Rafferty’s right. Rafferty is tracking it with his eyes, watching the light through the front windshield glint off the barrel, when Mr. Left shifts his weight, and then something cracks down onto the muscle between Rafferty’s neck and his left shoulder. His arm goes numb, and as his head jerks toward Mr. Left and he registers the blackjack in the man’s hand, the same thing happens to his right shoulder.
He makes a sound that’s all U’s and H’s, a sound someone might make as a bull plows into his midsection, and he realizes he can barely lift his arms. Through the roaring in his ears, he hears Yellow Shirt.
“You’re right-handed, and you should have realized I’d know it. But to show you that we can get along if you’ll drop the project, we’ll leave your right hand alone.”
As though from a spot four or five feet above his own head, Rafferty watches his limp, numb left hand as Mr. Left picks it up and puts it on the back of the front seat. He holds it there as Mr. Right brings his blackjack up and then down onto the intricate latticework of bones in the back of the hand, and Rafferty’s scream tears his throat ragged.
“You should see a doctor,” Yellow Shirt says. “Probably a couple of fractures, and hands need to be looked at fast.” He waves the gun back and forth again. “This will take hours to treat. You’ll be out of circulation for the rest of the day, and then you’re going to stop, right? I’m going to tell my principal that you’re quitting, and you’re not going to make me look bad again.”
“No,” Rafferty says, through a windpipe that feels narrower than a pencil. “I mean, yes. I’m quitting.”
Yellow Shirt nods. “Good, good. You can get out now. Wasn’t this better than getting shot?” He leans over the seat and drops the cell phone into Rafferty’s shirt pocket. “You can call your friend back,” he says. “Although it may be a while before you can dial.”
This is for teeth,” Dr. Pumchang says. From the speaker in the corner of the room, the Carpenters are singing “Rainy Days and Mondays,” a song Rafferty had hoped never to hear again.
“It’ll do,” Rafferty says, between jaws tight enough to have been wired together. “I just need to know whether it’s broken.”
He sits with his left hand throbbing in a steel bowl of ice water while his dentist, with doubt animating every muscle in her face, lines up small pieces of dental X-ray film to create a rectangular area a little bigger than Rafferty’s hand. Out in the waiting room are the pumpkin-colored chairs where he and Elora Weecherat had talked.
“The machine can only photograph a small area at a time,” Dr. Pumchang says. “I’m going to have to take a dozen pictures. Why can’t you be like everyone else and go see a real doctor?”
“It’s not like I play the piano,” Rafferty says, and then grabs a breath and holds it as the nerves in his arm stand up and do the wave to pass a burst of pain along to the part of his brain that keeps track of such things. When he can talk, he says, “I use this hand mainly to comb my hair.”
“How did this happen?” Dr. Pumchang puts the last piece of film in place and studies the quiltlike rectangle she has created. With a long, meticulously lacquered fingernail, she pushes one edge piece half a millimeter toward the center. The picture painted on the nail is Hokusai’s famous ocean wave.
“I closed a car door on it.”
Dr. Pumchang makes a noise Rafferty’s mother would have called a raspberry. “Single point of impact,” she says. “Not a straight line of force, like a car door. No abrasions, no broken skin. If you’re not going to tell me the truth, don’t tell me anything.”
“Fine,” Rafferty says. “Don’t ask me questions.”
“What it looks like,” she says, “is that someone slammed it with something small and heavy.”
“That’s what it looks like, huh?”
“Dry your hand,” she says. Her lips are drawn so tight that they’ve practically disappeared.
He takes the towel and very gently pats the hand dry.
“Flap it around. Let the air get to it. Get it dry.”
“The film gets wet in my mouth. How come it can’t get wet now?”
“Just listen to the nice music and do what I say. Or go see a hand doctor.”
“Nobody listens to the Carpenters anymore.”
“I do.”
“Probably cheaper than anesthetic.”
Dr. Pumchang pulls the X-ray unit toward him. “Put the hand down carefully, fingers as close together as you can get them, palm flat, if you can do it, and don’t mess up my film. If you move the pieces around, I’ll have to do the whole thing over again, and I’ll probably think better of it.”
“So much for bedside manner,” Rafferty says, lowering his palm carefully onto the pieces of film and hoping she doesn’t notice how they spread out beneath his hand.
“Just be quiet and hold still.” She positions the lens over the center of his wrist, leaves the room, and Rafferty hears a short buzz. Then she comes back in and moves the lens a couple of inches. “I really don’t know why I’m doing this.”
“Because you’re a good Buddhist.”
“Don’t push it.” She leaves again, and Rafferty hears the buzz again. “By the time we finish this,” she says, coming back into the room, “you’ll probably be sterile.”
“OKAY,” DR. PUMCHANG says, “what you’ve got is two fractures. Second and third metacarpals.” She is peering at the pieces of film, which she’s joined together with transparent tape and clipped onto a light box. “They’re pressure breaks, like you’d get if you bit down too hard on a chicken bone. Can you visualize that?”
This was exactly what Rafferty hadn’t wanted to hear. “All too vividly.”
“The good news is that almost all the pieces are in place. In other words, the splinters are right where they should be. More or less. Properly cared for, the bones should knit without any real lasting damage.”
“And what constitutes ‘properly cared for’?”
“A splint, then a cast, a month or so of not using it.” She looks over at him. “Say something so I know you’re listening to me.”
“Okay. I’m listening to you. Here’s what I want you to do: I want you to take the case this awful Carpenters CD came in, and I’ll put my palm on it with my fingers jammed together, and you just tape the hell out of it. That way I’ll be back on the street in about ten minutes.”
“This is your hand,” Dr. Pumchang says. “You’ve only got two of them. You’re risking severely impaired function. How would you like not to be able to bend your fingers?”
“For how long?”
“For the rest of your life.”
“Oh.”
“In the best prognosis, you might be able to use it as a Ping-Pong paddle.”
“Well, then,” Rafferty says, “you’d better tape it really well.”
DOWN ON THE street, it takes him three one-handed tries to bring up “recent calls” on his cell phone and press the “connect” button to dial Arthit. He puts the phone to his ear, looking down at the white adhesive-taped rectangle of his left hand, and waits.
“Hello,” says someone who is not Arthit.
The hair on the back of Rafferty’s neck stands on end. The tone is recognizable the world around. “Is Arthit there?”
Not-Arthit says, “Who is this?”
“I’ll call him back.” Rafferty folds the phone one-handed and puts it into his shirt pocket. There’s no question in his mind that Arthit’s phone has just been answered by a police officer. Immediately his phone starts to ring. He doesn’t even have to look at the readout to know it’s the cops, calling him back.
The envelope says, DON’T COME IN. CALL A FRIEND.
It sits, meticulously centered, on the coffee table in front of the couch in Arthit’s living room. It is the only thing on the table. The characters are written in thick black felt-tip. Noi’s usual handwriting was slapdash, the lines of text slanting up to the right in a way that Arthit always saw as optimistic. But these words are ruler-straight and meticulously formed. The kind of care she would take with the last thing she would ever do.
Where did she sit to write it? he asks himself, and immediately knows the answer: the kitchen table. There had been a half-drunk cup of tea on the table. He’d seen it before his foot slipped.
“Can I get you anything?” Kosit asks.
Sitting in the center of the couch, Arthit shakes his head. He says, “She didn’t finish her tea.”
Kosit blinks and says, “I hadn’t noticed that.”
“She was in a hurry,” Arthit says. “She wanted to make sure.”
“Sure?”
“That I didn’t come home too early. That the…that the pills had time to work.” He can’t find the voice to continue, so he clears his throat and looks back down at the envelope. He hasn’t opened it yet. He’s not sure he’ll ever be able to open it.
The front door stands wide open, and an ambulance’s red lights blink on-off-on through the window. A few people have gathered curiously on the sidewalk. Arthit can hear the medical technicians talking in the bedroom. When they wheel Noi out, it will be the last time she ever leaves the house. Their house.
Of course he had gone in.
After all, he’d come home early. She might still have been…
“A glass of water,” he says. His voice is husky.
“Sure,” Kosit says. He gets up but stops as two uniformed patrolmen come in. “What?” he asks. “Why are you here?”
“We got called. Fatality, right?” The senior patrolman is in his early fifties, nut brown. He’s got a nose as bulbous as a head of garlic, the skin covering it a miniature map of broken veins. Beneath a flop of dirty hair are tiny eyes, the whites a disconcertingly sweet pink. His younger partner looks embarrassed, his eyes fixed on the carpet.
“Suicide,” Kosit says. “The survivor is a cop. You’re not needed.”
“We got a call,” says the senior patrolman. “From headquarters.”
“It’s a mistake,” Kosit says. “Go away.”
“From whom?” Arthit asks.
“Excuse me?” The senior patrolman scratches the back of his neck, revealing a dark, damp circle under his right arm.
Arthit says, “I asked who put out the call.”
“You’re the husband, right?” says the senior patrolman. He waits for an answer, letting the silence yawn between them.
“I am,” Arthit says at last.
“Yeah, well, then, I don’t see that you need to know who put out the call.” His partner shifts his gaze from the carpet to the tops of his own shoes.
“You’re being offensive,” Kosit says. “This man is a lieutenant colonel on the force. We have a note, in the handwriting of the deceased.”
“Where?” asks the senior patrolman. He takes two more steps into the room, claiming it as his own.
“It’s-” Kosit says, glancing down. The coffee table is bare. “It’s in the…um, kitchen,” he says.
“We’ll need it to take it,” says the senior patrolman. “And, sir,” he says to Arthit, “we’ll need your weapon.”
Arthit says, “What’s your name?”
“And where’s your name plate?” Kosit demands.
“In the car.” The senior patrolman rests his hand on the butt of his automatic. “I want the weapon, sir. Now.”
“Why is your name plate in the car? And him”-he lifts his chin at the embarrassed partner-“did he forget his, too?”
“For the third time,” the patrolman says, “I want your weapon.”
“I’ll have to get it,” Arthit says, standing up. He goes toward the dining room, then stops and says over his shoulder, “Surely you’re not going to let me go alone. How do you know I’m not going to come back shooting?”
“Go with him,” the senior patrolman says to his partner, who swallows convulsively at the prospect.
“I’ll go,” Kosit says. “This man’s rank deserves that kind of respect.”
The wheels of the gurney squeal from the hallway. Arthit forces himself not to turn to look, but the senior patrolman’s eyes flick toward the noise, and he watches with some curiosity. “Go,” he says.
Arthit leads Kosit through the dining room, listening to Noi’s progress down the hall on the other side of the house. “This is about taking me off the board,” he says very softly to Kosit when they’re crossing the breakfast nook. “It’s about the thing Poke’s involved in, the thing with Pan.”
“Who put out the call?” Kosit says.
“Thanom. He’s probably the guy who scrubbed Pan’s records.”
“That tapeworm. What can I do?”
“Give me your money.”
Kosit pats his pockets, locates a wad of bills folded so tightly they look like they’ve been ironed, and passes them to Arthit. Arthit pulls out his own money, puts the two stashes together, and slips them back in his pocket.
By now they are in the kitchen. Moving quickly, Arthit goes to the kitchen table, the table where he and Noi ate breakfast only that morning, where she rested her head on his shoulder, the table where they’d eaten all their meals since it became more difficult for her to carry the food even as far as the breakfast nook. The table where she probably wrote the note.
Next to the half-empty teacup, on which he now sees a pale lipstick print that stabs him through the center of his heart, are the gun belt and holster. Arthit pulls the automatic free and lets the belt and holster fall to the floor. He stares down at the gun in his hand long enough to make Kosit put a hand on his arm.
Arthit looks up. “Count to thirty,” he says. “Then knock over the table and call for help.”
“Got it.”
Arthit opens the back door. “I’ll call you after I buy a new phone. They’ll be looking out for calls from this one.” He takes his phone out of his pocket and hands it to Kosit. The two men regard each other for a long, silent moment.
“I’m counting,” Kosit says. “One…”
Arthit takes one last look at Noi’s kitchen. Then he says, “Thanks. I won’t forget this.” A moment later he’s out the door and into the dark, wet warmth of the night, the gun cold and reassuringly solid in his hand.
He should have accepted the painkillers Dr. Pumchang offered.
If he bends his elbow sharply and holds the taped hand against his chest at about heart level, the throbbing subsides to a point at which it’s just a hairsbreadth on the wrong side of unbearable. He cradles the left wrist in his right hand, with the result that he has no hands free. It’s getting dark, but the sidewalks are still crowded, and he negotiates his way through the oncoming crowd, hands clasped to the center of his chest like someone who is about to open them to sing, his elbows pointed out in front of him to keep anyone from blundering into the rigid, swollen, white-wrapped rectangle that used to be his left hand.
His cell phone rings, and he lets go of the bad hand long enough to bring the phone’s display into his field of vision. Arthit’s number again. He’ll have to answer sooner or later, but right now he hasn’t got the courage to find out what’s happened. Not that a cop will tell him. But why doesn’t Arthit have his phone? He’ll face it when he gets home.
Rafferty is a city boy by choice, and this is normally the hour he likes best, when the day shrugs its shoulders and allows the night to slip back in, when Bangkok goes through four or five kinds of light in an hour. The show begins with the gradual softening of dusk, the buildings’ windows growing brighter and their edges sharper against the darkening sky as the first bats flap raggedly across it, and finishes with the sidewalks chalky with the spill of light from stores and restaurants and bars, and the bluish electric snap from the buzzing streetlights high overhead. He’s often thought that Tolouse-Lautrec would have loved it.
But tonight it seems hellish and sulfurous, as though the world were lighted by Lautrec’s gas-lamp footlights, turning faces into irregular expressionistic assemblages of light and shadow, concealing eyes and washing the color out of clothes. Making it harder to spot Yellow Shirt or any other extra, unwanted wheels he might be hauling along. Rafferty is keenly aware that he’s the next thing to helpless-he’d do anything to prevent a blow to his hand-and the anxiety makes him scan the faces around him with an added degree of intensity.
Which is how he spots the girl.
As he nears the turn that will take him to his apartment, he becomes aware that the makeup of the crowd on the sidewalk has changed. There are more children than he is used to seeing, street children by the look of them, feral and filthy-faced and wearing dirty, ill-matched clothing. They weave in and out among the larger figures, sometimes passing him in the direction in which he is going, sometimes coming at him head-on. He notices one girl, perhaps twelve or thirteen, who has a tangle of wild hair above a scar that slashes diagonally down her forehead through her left eyebrow, mercifully skips the eye, and begins again as a furrow plowed into her smooth cheek. He watches her in profile as she overtakes him and disappears into the throng. Four or five minutes later, he sees her coming toward him.
Okay. Not random.
The girl doesn’t glance at him, doesn’t even seem to feel his eyes on her, but he knows she has registered his gaze, sees it in the almost undetectable increase in the speed at which she walks, in the sharper downward tilt of her head. Clutching the injured hand against his chest, he works his way over to a shop window and backs up until his shoulders touch the glass. Whatever is coming, it will at least have to come head-on.
And then, of course, he knows what it is that’s coming.
He is already looking for the boy by the time the familiar face appears down the street, moving along at precisely the pace of the crowd, angling slowly toward the window where Rafferty waits, feeling his heart thrum in the vein at his throat and wondering how in the world he can factor this into his life right now. And then he realizes that whatever the boy wants, it would not be good for whoever is tailing him to see the connection between them, so he pulls the bandaged hand away from his chest and uses his right to hike the sleeve above the adhesive tape so he can check his watch. He does his best to register impatience and scan the crowd like someone who’s being stood up, and then he turns and moves with the flow, but more slowly, keeping the buildings at his left shoulder.
The boy moves beside him without a glance. He has a hand on the arm of a young woman-a girl, really-who holds a baby. Neither of them seems to notice Rafferty, but the boy, without turning his head, says, “You’re being followed.”
Lowering his gaze to look at his watch again, Rafferty says, “How many, and what color shirt?”
“One. Blue. Can I get rid of him?”
“Don’t hurt him. I’m in enough trouble already. Nobody in yellow?”
“Not for the last three blocks anyway.”
“Let’s lose him.”
The boy shrugs assent and moves on. The girl beside him risks one short look at Rafferty, then snaps her head forward again, but not before her eyes slide down to the white-wrapped hand. She tosses a quick, puzzled smile and hurries on beside the boy, putting her free hand on his arm in a way that makes Rafferty think, Hmmmm, even under these circumstances.
A broad incline of steps opens up to Rafferty’s left, rising to a complex of shops and restaurants that’s anchored by an enormous and brilliantly lit McDonald’s, in front of which Ronald offers the passing crowd a permanent plastic wai, hands palm to palm against his chest in greeting. Halfway up the steps, Rafferty turns idly and surveys the crowd, still trying to look like the man whose date hasn’t shown.
His phone rings again, and again it’s Arthit’s number.
The sidewalk teems with people: those who left work late, those who are starting the evening early, those who are squeezing in some last-minute shopping, those who just want to move around now that the day’s heat is lifting, those whose fingers are happiest in other people’s pockets, those who are always on the street. Rafferty’s attention is drawn by a shout and a sudden knot of people on the sidewalk, a little eddy like a whirlpool twelve or fifteen feet away. Another shout, a curse this time, and the knot dissolves, and three children streak for the curb. One of them holds a wallet straight up in the air like the Olympic torch. The children pause in the parking lane, tossing the wallet back and forth, and then there’s an eruption of people, shoved forward from behind, and the children take off, heading back down Silom, away from Rafferty, with Blue Shirt in pursuit, screaming after them and stretching his arms in front of him as he runs, as though they were as elastic as chewing gum and he could suddenly extend them and snag the nearest kid.
“Now,” the boy says, suddenly beside him. “Down, into the crowd, and around the corner. We’ll be there.” He descends a step and then turns back and says, “If you’ll talk to me, I mean.” Then he hops lightly down the stairs and melts into the crowd, and Rafferty, feeling old and fragile by contrast, pulls out his cell phone and, with some difficulty, opens it, then presses and holds the 1 key to speed-dial Rose. By the time she answers, he is already at the foot of the steps, pressing the bad hand to his chest.
“Rose,” he says. “Get Miaow and leave the apartment.” He finds an entry point in the crowd and steers himself into the stream of people. “No, nothing’s wrong. I just need you to get your two watchers out of the way. I want to get into the building without being seen. Tell Miaow you’ll buy her an ice cream or something. Call me when you know you’re being followed.” He folds the phone against his chin and drops it into his shirt pocket, then grabs his left wrist again as the hand seems to balloon with pain.
Five minutes later, standing on the side street with the boy and the young woman looking at him expectantly, he answers the phone, and Rose says, “The apartment’s clear. They’re behind us.”
“THERE ARE TWENTY-FOUR right now,” Boo says. He reaches up to the wall behind him and rubs the hanging blanket between his thumb and forefinger as though he’s thinking about buying it. “Sometimes there are more, sometimes not so many.”
“Twenty-six,” says the girl, who has been introduced as Da. “If you count us.”
“Twenty-five and a half,” Boo says, and Da grins, and Rafferty has to tighten his jaw to keep it from dropping. The kid made a joke? In the old days, a little less than two years ago when the boy-then known by his street name, Superman-first barged into their lives-he’d rarely smiled at anything lighter than a five-act tragedy.
“Excuse me,” Da says politely. “Why is your hand like that?”
“I don’t want to forget my Carpenters CD,” Rafferty says. “This way I never do.”
“But-” Da says, looking puzzled.
The boy says, “Don’t joke with her. She believes everything.”
And Rafferty watches in amazement as the girl takes one hand off the baby and swats Superman-Boo-across the head.
“But you can’t play it,” Da says, glaring at the boy, who’s cringing in mock terror, “if it’s all taped up like that.”
“This is my contribution to the evening, wherever I go,” Rafferty says. “Making sure that there’s at least one Carpenters CD that nobody can play.”
“Who stomped on your hand?” Boo asks.
“Someone you’ll never have to meet.”
The boy shrugs without much interest and looks around. Despite Rafferty’s efforts, the apartment on the fourth floor is dingy and cheerless. Through a six-inch gap between the sheets and pillowcases he hung over the windows, he can see wet-looking streaks of whatever the hell is left on glass after it’s been badly washed.
“Why are we here?” Boo asks. “Where’s Miaow?”
“We’re here because we can’t go upstairs for a bunch of reasons,” Rafferty says, “and Miaow is out right now with Rose.”
“What reasons?” the boy asks.
The girl asks, “Who’s Miaow?”
“My daughter,” Rafferty says, and suddenly an idea breaks over him like a wave. It’s enough to make him sit forward and forget about the hand for a moment. “Twenty-four kids? You’ve got twenty-four kids?”
“Give or take,” Boo says.
Da says, “How old is Miaow?”
“Then you can help me,” Rafferty says, closing his eyes. He’s been in another poker game for the past few days, he realizes, playing against pros this time, and he’s suddenly been dealt a hand full of wild cards. He’s already seeing it in his mind, setting up the bluff, figuring out what he’ll need.
“Good,” Boo says, settling into his uncomfortable chair, “because we need you to help us, too.”
Da says again, “How old is-” but the boy cuts her off with a glance.
“WHERE ARE YOU?” demands Captain Teeth.
“Outside the apartment,” says the man who had been watching Rafferty. “I only lost him for five or ten minutes this time.”
Captain Teeth rests his forehead in his hand. “What do you mean, this time?”
“He went into a building an hour or so ago. He must have come out the back way or something, because I was out front the whole time. I picked him up about half an hour later, and he’d hurt his hand somehow. He went into another building and got it bandaged, and then…well, then-”
“Kid stole your wallet.” Captain Teeth turns up the volume on the console. He has one earpiece of his headphone still in place, and the cell phone pressed to his other ear. Rafferty’s apartment is silent.
“Three of the little bastards. But I got it back.”
“I don’t give a shit about your wallet. You shouldn’t have chased them.”
“It was my wallet.”
“Oh, golly,” Captain Teeth says, listening to the silence in Rafferty’s living room. “A few baht, some fake ID, maybe a condom. No wonder they tossed it.”
“They got eight hundred baht.”
“You’d already lost him once, you idiot. You should have stayed with him.”
“Okay.” When Captain Teeth doesn’t say anything, the man adds, “Sorry.”
“Any chance it was a setup?”
“You mean, do I think he’s running a ring of homeless kids? No. The sidewalk was full of them. Must have been twenty.”
Captain Teeth says, “Is that normal?”
“No,” the man says grudgingly, “but come on. They move around. If they didn’t, everybody’d be on the lookout all the time.”
“What about the hand?”
“I don’t know. Maybe cut, maybe broken. All wrapped up in bandages.”
“Any lights on in the apartment right now?”
The man on the street counts balconies and corner windows until he gets to Rafferty’s floor. “The one in the living room.”
“Well, I can’t hear him.”
“Are the woman and the girl in there? I don’t see the guys who follow them.”
“No,” Captain Teeth says. “They went out ten, fifteen minutes ago. The guys are behind them.”
“So,” the man on the street says, “what’s the problem? There’s no one for him to talk to.”
“The woman got a phone call just before they went out,” Captain Teeth says. “And what it all adds up to is that we don’t really know where Rafferty is, and the building went for ten minutes or so with nobody watching it.” He sits back in his chair and takes the nail of his uninjured thumb between his straggling incisors.
The man on the other end of the phone says, “Kai?”
Captain Teeth-Kai-says, “I’m thinking.” The door to the office opens, and Ren comes in, looking sleepy. He’s breathing through his mouth to cool the burned spot on his tongue. He looks at Kai, with the phone to one ear, and raises his eyebrows questioningly.
“Go inside,” Kai says into the phone.
“And do what? Knock on his door?”
“Yes.”
“He’s in there, I’m telling you.”
“Based on what?” Kai hears something in his other ear. “Hold on,” he says. To Ren he says, “Grab the headphones.”
Ren pulls out his chair, sits, and clamps the phones to his ears. Together the two of them listen to a ringing telephone in Rafferty’s apartment.
Ren looks over at Kai and says, “So?”
“So some kids picked Dit’s pocket, and Dit chased them and lost Rafferty, and the other two followed the woman and the girl out of the apartment, and now it’s Dit’s best guess that Rafferty’s at home.”
“Sure he is,” Dit says on the phone.
“Then why isn’t he answering his phone?” Kai demands. “The fucking thing has been ringing for twenty or thirty seconds.”
Dit says, “Oh.”
“Get your ass up there. Knock on the door. If he doesn’t answer, pick the lock and take a look. If he does answer, just turn around and go down the stairs. Don’t answer any questions, just get out of there.”
“Wait,” Ren says. “Let me try something.” He takes out his own cell phone and dials Rafferty’s cell number. Listens as it begins to ring.
Fails to hear it in his earphones.
“Go in,” Kai says to Dit. “Go in now.”
“I TOOK CARE of Miaow for a while,” Boo is telling Da. “Way before she met Poke. She was only four or five then, but she was already on the street. Four or five, right?” he asks Rafferty.
“That’s what she says. She also says you saved her life.”
“She could take care of herself, even then.” But Boo’s cheeks have gone pink. “And I didn’t take very good care of her when I started using yaa baa, did I?”
Da says, “You did what?”
“All day and all night.”
Rafferty’s cell phone rings.
“Why would you do that?” Da asks.
“I was crazy,” Boo says. To Rafferty he says, “Aren’t you going to answer that?”
“Not yet,” Rafferty says. It rings again.
“Then when?” Boo asks. “What are you waiting for? A sign of some kind?”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” Rafferty says. “Everybody except me knows what I should do.” He pulls out the phone and looks at it. His forehead creases for a moment as he looks at the number, and then he’s up and running toward the door.
“Stay here,” he says. “Don’t go anywhere, don’t open this door.”
He takes the stairs three at a time, catching his foot once and landing on his outstretched palms, and he screams at the pain, but even while he’s screaming, he’s pushing himself to his feet again and running upstairs for all he’s worth. If someone was watching the building, he has to be in the apartment. On the seventh floor, it suddenly occurs to him that the door to the eighth might be locked, and although he thinks it’s impossible for his heart to beat any faster, it accelerates in his chest anyway and doesn’t slow until the eighth-floor doorknob turns in his hand. He hurries down the corridor, fishing out his keys, and mutes the phone before slipping the key into the door.
Behind him the elevator moans and shudders into motion, bringing someone up.
He pushes the apartment door open slowly, breathing through his mouth to silence his panting. He pulls out the phone again, but it’s no longer ringing. Tucking the reinjured hand beneath one arm and forcing himself to breathe regularly, he closes the door slowly, tiptoes to the bathroom, and flushes the toilet. Then he closes the door sharply. Still in the hallway outside the bathroom, he mops his forehead and pushes the button to return the most recent call.
RAFFERTY’S VOICE IN his earphones brings Ren bolt upright. Rafferty says, “Yeah?”
Kai has his cell phone to his ear. “Where were you?” He’s pulled the earphones off and is looking at them as though they’d suddenly started transmitting classical music.
“What do you care? And aren’t you supposed to know where I am? Something wrong with your terrific surveillance system?”
“You…ahhh, you didn’t answer.” Kai puts one of the phones back over his free ear.
“I was washing my hands, if you actually need to know. Something I usually do after I go to the bathroom.”
Kai turns to Ren and gestures frantically at his own telephone. Ren looks at him, bewildered, and Kai puts a hand over the mouthpiece of his cell phone and rasps, “Dit.”
“Oh,” Ren says, dialing. He waits as the phone on the other end rings.
“Huh,” Rafferty says. “Sounds like someone’s in the hall.”
“Oh, yeah?” Kai says. “You’re…um, you’re home, then?”
“Where else would I be? Hold on, somebody’s just standing out there while his cell phone rings.”
Ren says into his phone, “Dit. Get out of there.”
“It’s probably nothing,” Kai says. “How did the interviews go?”
“Are we chatting?” Rafferty says. “And don’t tell me it’s nothing when it’s at the door of my own apartment.” There’s a pause. “Well,” he says. “Nobody there. Didn’t even leave a copy of the Watchtower.” Kai hears the door close. “So was there a reason you called?”
“Just reminding you there’s a deadline coming up.”
“That’s very thoughtful of you.” He disconnects, and a moment later Ren and Kai hear him in their earphones, saying to the empty room,
“What a bunch of idiots.”
His first stop, maybe a quarter of a mile from the house, is an ATM. He withdraws the limit on his bank card, then inserts a credit card and does it again. Standing with his back to the sidewalk and his head down, panting from the run and feeling his shirt plaster itself to his spine, he watches the crisp new thousand-baht notes slide through the slot.
Put it together with what he already has and what Kosit gave him, and he’s got twenty-three thousand baht. Not enough, not when he has no idea how long he’ll be on the run.
On the run. Considering who he’s running from, tonight may be the last time he’ll be able to do this without sending skyrockets through the computer system. By tomorrow he probably won’t even get his card back.
He wants to try the credit card again, but someone is waiting behind him, and he doesn’t want anyone looking at him for long. He’s pulled his shirt free of his trousers to hide the gun and opened his collar, but he’s still unmistakably in uniform.
A police car speeds by, lights blinking, going in the direction of his house. Time to move.
At the curb he flags a motorcycle taxi, and the driver fishtails to a stop with an alacrity that makes it obvious he’s registered that Arthit’s a cop, loose shirttails or no loose shirttails. This does not make Arthit any happier than he is already.
“Pratunam,” he says, and wraps his hands around the coward’s grab bar on the rear of the rider’s seat as the bike leaps forward.
And finds himself looking at the denim landscape of the driver’s back and seeing his wife’s eyes. Noi, he thinks.
In self-defense he conjures up Thanom’s monkey face and waits for the surge of good, cold, cleansing fury. But instead something hollow and dark spins in a widening whirlpool beneath his heart, and he thinks again, Noi.
“THEY DUG A new river,” Da is saying in the fourth-floor apartment, “and then they built a dam just below where they dug, so all the water went into the new riverbed and our river dried up.” She tilts a plastic baby bottle, bought at Foodland that morning, into Peep’s mouth. “They were smart,” she says. “They did it toward the end of the summer, when the river always got low anyway. When the water stopped, we all thought it would start again by the time the rains came. But it didn’t.”
“Where did it go?” Rafferty says.
She is studying the baby’s face. “To a golf course. When we went and looked, everybody was Japanese. All the golfers, I mean. The people who chased us away were Thai.”
“You went and looked?”
“Well, sure,” she says, meeting his eyes. “We wondered where our river had gone, so we followed the new one.”
Boo is watching her as she talks. She glances over at him, and he holds his arms out to take the baby. She hands Peep to him without a moment’s hesitation. When the child is comfortable in Boo’s lap, he slips the nipple of the bottle between Peep’s lips. Da watches long enough to make sure Peep is drinking before she returns her gaze to Rafferty. For a moment she seems to have forgotten where she is in her story, and Rafferty wonders for the third or fourth time about the relationship between them.
“They chased you away,” he prompts.
“They didn’t want us there. The place was so green and pretty and full of important people, and we were all dusty and had holes in our clothes. About a week later, they brought the big machines and knocked our houses down.”
“Where did everyone go?”
She shakes her head. “Wherever they could. My mom and dad took my sisters and went to live with my mother’s parents. But my grandfather doesn’t have any money, so I came here.” She flicks her eyes toward Boo. “To beg.”
“Was there any kind of piece of paper? Did anyone ever show you anything that said they had the right to take the river? Or knock down the houses?”
She slips her index finger into the hole above the knee of her jeans and tugs at its edge. “The policemen who came with the machines had something, some piece of paper a lot of the people in the village had signed.”
“What, a deed? Did someone pay you all something?”
“My father said it was something they were told to sign so they could vote. All the people who signed it were old enough to vote.”
“Did it say anything about voting? Did it say anything about-I don’t know-a bill of sale or anything?” He stops because she is looking down, working the finger in the hole in her jeans, and her face is darkening.
After a moment she says, “I don’t know.”
Rafferty says, “I see.” He should have known she couldn’t read.
“But that’s not why we’re here anyway,” Boo says into the silence. “It’s about the baby. It’s about Peep.”
HE BLOWS OUT in relief as the machine yields five thousand baht more. That’s twenty-eight thousand, roughly eight hundred American dollars. The credit card worked again, but he’s hit the limit for twenty-four hours, and by then the cards will be dead anyway. Thanom has the clout for that, and the people who are screwing with Rafferty have enough power, and probably enough foot soldiers, to put a man on every ATM in Bangkok.
His shirt is soaked through, the sweat turning the chocolate brown material almost black. It’s still hot out, but this is the sweat of fury. When he thinks of Thanom, his hands involuntarily clench at his sides. The man has deprived Arthit of his time to mourn.
What would Noi want Arthit to do now? The answer comes as clearly as if she were standing beside him, whispering in his ear. He should take care of himself.
He briefly asks himself whether the best way to take care of himself would be to turn himself in, then dismisses it. The two cops who came to his door had removed their name plates. If only one of them hadn’t been wearing his name, Arthit might have chalked it up to sloppiness or a memory lapse. But both of them? Something very wrong there. Kosit was the one who had called in the death, so whoever took the call knew there was another cop in Arthit’s house. The two who came to the door didn’t want Kosit to know their names.
He doesn’t think Thanom would have him killed. But something was going on, something outside the normal course of official detention and questioning. Maybe it was just a stall for time; maybe he was going to be lost in the system for a while, stuck in some cell somewhere with no way out until he could be “discovered” and apologized to, maybe even given some sort of token, a raise or something. But that could be weeks from now, after whatever it is Thanom thinks Arthit knows will no longer have value.
And that something has to be connected with Pan. This all began with Pan.
He catches a whiff of his own sweat and glances down at his shirt.
Right, clothes. The booths that crowd the sidewalks of Pratunam are beginning to shut-there’s a dark spot here and there where the spotlights have already been doused-but the sellers who are active are eager to accommodate a policeman. Within twenty minutes he has bags containing three anonymous plaid shirts, a couple of generic T-shirts, and two pairs of preshrunk, precreased, totally indestructible and wholly synthetic pants that will probably be the last man-made objects on earth. His shoes are a dead giveaway, cop from soles to laces, but they fit well, and if anyone gets close enough to look at them, he’s finished anyway. He makes a final stop at a booth that sells toiletry articles and buys a razor, some shaving foam, a comb, and a toothbrush. The woman studies him as she puts them into the bag, wondering why a cop needs to buy the stuff for a night out and concluding that he’s got some action lined up somewhere. She practically winks at him as she hands him his purchases.
She’ll remember him, too.
So far, he thinks, tucking the bag under his arm with the others, I might as well be fluorescent, leaving glowing footprints everywhere I go. How the hell did crooks manage?
Still, with the change of clothes in a bag and the night stretching out around him in all directions, he can feel a sort of click inside, a hardening of purpose and sharpening of focus he has come to regard as his cop mode. When he feels like this, he occasionally visualizes himself as a human flashlight, pointed forward, sharp-eyed, able to ignore the irrelevant and cut through the fog of confusion. This is when he does his best work.
But the lift in his spirits doesn’t last long. He’s looking for someplace he can change clothes when he sees the blinking lights. Regular, steady, red flashes, coming from the intersection half a block in front of him. He turns around to put some distance between himself and the police van, then halts. There are red lights in the street behind him, too, at the other end of the block. And he stands there, clutching the bags as the illusion of competence recedes, asking himself why on earth he took the time to go shopping on the same street where he used an ATM.
“THEY TOOK THE kid away from her,” Da says. “Like it was a lamp or something, not a…a child. And next time I saw her, she had a new one. They gave her a baby. The same way they gave Peep to me.”
“Wichat did,” Rafferty says, just trying to keep track.
Da says, “I guess so.”
“He’s been sending beggars out with babies for at least a year,” Boo says. “Everybody on the street knows it. But nobody says anything. He’s not a friendly guy.”
“Where does he get them? Any idea what he’s doing?”
Boo says, “What I think he’s doing is selling them. I think he’s buying them someplace, maybe from people who steal them, and then keeping them until he can find a buyer. And giving them to beggars, so that…well, that way he doesn’t have to draw attention by storing a whole bunch of babies somewhere.”
“And beggars with babies make more money,” Da says. “At least that’s what he told me.”
“You say babies,” Rafferty says. “How old is a baby?”
“A year,” Superman says with a shrug. “Maybe a year, eighteen months. Like Peep.”
“So they can’t talk,” Rafferty says.
Da says, “No. I didn’t see any that were old enough to talk, except some who were injured and the boy they took away, and he was simple or something. He never said a word.”
“Why does that matter?” Superman says. He squints, working it out. “Because…what? Because babies can’t tell the people who buy them that they were stolen?”
“Sure,” Rafferty says. “And maybe because if they could talk, they wouldn’t speak Thai.”
Da looks down at Peep as though he could answer her question. “Not speak Thai?”
“Three or four years ago,” Rafferty says, “there was a big baby racket in Cambodia. People went there from America and Europe, thousands of them, to adopt children who were supposed to be orphans. But they weren’t orphans. They’d been bought from poor families for fifty or a hundred dollars. Sometimes they were just stolen. The new parents paid anywhere from thirty to fifty thousand dollars for a baby. The money was supposed to pay some sort of official fees.”
Boo says, “Thirty to fifty thousand per kid?”
“Per kid.”
“There were four or five babies at the place I was staying,” Da says. The numbers are unimaginable. “And I think they may have more places.”
“They have three more,” Boo says. “My guess is that they’ve got fifteen or twenty babies at any time.”
Rafferty says, “A while back I heard something about babies being brought here, carried across the border by women who pretended to be their mothers. Makes sense, I suppose, just thugs shaking hands across the border. The racket was too profitable to let it go. But I’m not sure what you want me to do. Do you want to find a way to get-What’s the baby’s name?”
“Peep,” Da says.
“Do you want to get Peep back to his mother or something?”
“Oh,” Da says, looking like someone who has just been surprised by a loud noise. “I don’t…I mean, I don’t-”
Rafferty’s phone rings. He pulls it out of his pocket and checks the display, which says KOSIT.
THERE IS NOWHERE to go. Another van has pulled up at each end of the block, straight across all the lanes to cut off the traffic, and Arthit sees six or eight uniformed policemen climb out of each. They obviously intend to work toward one another in the hope that Arthit is somewhere between them. He sees them split up, some moving slowly, trolling the sidewalk, while others stop and talk to the vendors.
The uniforms have fanned out onto both sides of the street, which is now empty of traffic and too wide and well lit to cross comfortably. Arthit knows he’d never make it to the other side. He’s closer to the vans in front of him, so he turns around and moves with the crowd, which is gradually slowing to a stop. The cops at either end are funneling people down to single file, peering at faces.
He stops walking. Faces? How would they know what he looks like? It’s surprising enough that Thanom could scramble a force so quickly; there’s no way he’s had the time to print out and distribute a stack of Arthit’s file photos. He moves a bit farther along until he’s in front of a booth that’s gone dark, and he steps back into the gloom and squints at the group of cops that’s working its way toward him from his left.
He knows some of them. He sees three men and one woman he has worked with, nobody he could call a friend but people who can identify him on sight. Even a change of clothing isn’t going to allow him to slip away.
The nearest pair of cops reaches the booth where he bought his shirts. The vendor keeps his face down, not wanting to challenge the cops in any way, but then he looks up and nods an answer. He talks for a moment, waving his hand along the sidewalk in Arthit’s direction. Then he comes out from behind his counter and indicates the booth where Arthit bought the razor.
The dark spot where Arthit is standing suddenly feels quite a bit brighter than it did a moment ago. Without looking left or right, he crosses the uneven sidewalk to its far edge and begins to move slowly along, his left shoulder almost brushing the walls of the buildings that face the booths. Unlike some areas of Pratunam, where booths hem the sidewalks on both sides, here they’re only on the traffic side. Opposite them are older, somewhat run-down buildings, mostly four- and five-story structures with shops at street level and apartments or offices above them. The street windows are mostly dark now, the shops locked, but he’s hoping that one of the doors leading upstairs will be open.
Keeping his movement small, using nothing but his left arm, he pushes on doors as he goes past them, twisting the occasional handle. He’s getting too close to a group of three cops who are stopping people on the sidewalk. If they look up and survey the crowd, they’ll see his face. Arthit is on the verge of taking a desperate chance and crossing the wide, empty street when the door he’s pushing on swings away from him.
He’d actually given up, and the open door takes him by surprise. He has to back up a step to go through it. It’s a glass door, framed in weathered, pockmarked aluminum. When it shuts behind him, he checks to see whether it can be locked from inside, but no-it needs to be keyed.
He finds himself in a small, murky space with just enough room for the door to clear the bottom step. The only light other than the splash from the street comes from a fluorescent tube at the top of the stairway. Without a backward glance, he turns away from the street and starts to climb the stairs, trying not to hurry. Hurry draws attention.
The night opens to the whoop-whoop-whoop of another police vehicle forcing its way through traffic. They must have called for additional support after they talked to the vendors in the booths. Thanom is serious, or whoever is pulling Thanom’s strings is serious.
At the top of the stairs, he finds a door and a switchback leading to another flight of stairs. He reaches up and pops the fluorescent tube loose and stands for a moment in the welcome darkness. Then he climbs the next flight of stairs.
There are three floors above the shop, then a short flight of stairs that leads to the roof. Each stair landing has a light, and after a moment’s thought he leaves the others on. If the cops come up the stairs and discover that the first fluorescent has been detached from its connection, additional tampering on the higher floors will just give them a trail to follow. He might as well put up a sign that says LOOK HERE. At the very top of the stairs, he checks out the door to the roof and finds it padlocked on the inside. He goes back down to the door on the first landing and gives it a shove. It opens onto a hallway, only ten or fifteen meters long, with two doors on each side. Four apartments in all.
He knows that finding an empty apartment is too much to hope for, but he quietly tries the doorknobs anyway. All locked. At the third one, he hears a questioning voice from inside: Someone must be waiting for a visitor. He barely makes it back to the stairwell before he hears the apartment door open. A moment later it closes again. He leans against the wall on the dark stair landing, fighting to get his breath under control.
Then, forcing his legs to move again, he turns and hauls himself up the stairs to the next floor. The apartment doors here are also locked, but at the end of the hall is a fifth door, which he pulls open. He finds himself looking at mops and brooms. A big, rust-stained, industrial-size basin hangs from one wall. A sagging shelf above the sink holds floor wax, powdered cleanser, paper towels. Nothing he can use. He thinks about taking the powdered cleanser, maybe throwing it into someone’s eyes, then rejects it. There will certainly be a gun pointed at him, and he’ll be dead before his target even sneezes.
He’s climbing up to the third floor when he hears the door to the street open.
“Wait here,” says a male voice. It’s a voice that sounds comfortable with command. “We’ll go up. You guys keep your eyes on the sidewalk. And nobody gets out through this door.”
RAFFERTY IS IN the dirty, empty master bedroom of the fourth-floor apartment with no memory of how he got there. “He can’t come here,” Rafferty says. “This place is being watched twenty-four hours, and it’s the first place they’ll look. If he calls you, tell him not to come here.”
“I don’t know whether he’ll call me,” Kosit says. “And there’s no way for me to reach him.”
Rafferty’s bandaged hand fires off a telegram of pain. He’s accidentally put it against the wall to steady himself. He tucks it safely under his right arm and considers whether to ask the next question. “Did you see her?”
A pause. Then, “Yes.”
“Did he?”
“The envelope on the door said not to go in, but you know him. He figured she might still be alive.”
Rafferty’s eyes are closed so tightly he sees red fireworks. “How bad was it?”
“She was an angel,” Kosit says. Rafferty can hear him swallow even on the phone. “She put on a really nice dress and even some makeup. She got all pretty, lay on her back, spread her hair out on the pillow, and went to sleep.”
“God bless her,” Rafferty says around the stone in his throat. “Hold on.” He tucks the phone under his left arm, wipes the cheeks he hadn’t known were wet, and dries his hand on his shirt. Then he puts the phone back to his ear. “Do you have any idea where he might have gone?”
“Nope. I’m at the station now, and there was kind of a flurry a little while ago. Thanom sent a bunch of guys out to Pratunam, but even if it was Arthit, I’m sure he’s not there anymore.”
Rafferty sniffles and says, “He’d want to buy clothes. Pratunam would be good.”
“Yeah. But you know he’s not going to hang around anywhere. He’s probably in some hotel by now.”
“I hope so. What did her note say?”
“He didn’t open it.”
“No, I suppose not. He’d want to be alone when he did that.”
“Right. God forbid he should get emotional in front of somebody.”
“If he does call you, tell him I’ll be out of here by the end of the day tomorrow. All three of us will. Tell him I’ll have my cell phone.”
“If they can put a flag on his phone, they can do the same to yours.”
“I’ll buy a stolen one as soon as I’m off everybody’s radar and call to give you the number. Tell him I can meet him any time after about three tomorrow. We should all be free and clear by then.”
“Just call me,” Kosit says. “That fucker Thanom.”
“Thanom could monitor your phone, too.”
“I’m not important enough.”
“You were at the card game. You’re Arthit’s friend. You should get another cell phone. When you’ve got it, call my landline at the apartment to leave the number. Make something up-you’re calling about the carpeting or something. I can retrieve it from voice mail even if I’m not there.”
“Will do.”
“I’ve got to call you back in a few minutes, after I finish something here. I need you to buy some stuff for me tomorrow morning.” Rafferty disconnects and wipes at his cheeks again. Then, blinking fast, he goes back into the living room. Boo and Da look up when he comes in.
“You okay?” Boo asks.
“It’s a rough time.” Rafferty sits on the stool with the cracked seat. “Listen, I can either write this story or put you together with someone who can do it better than I could. But I want to do something else, too. I want you to meet a guy named Pan.”
Boo’s eyes widen. “The rich guy? The gold car?”
“That’s the one.”
Da says, “Why?”
“I don’t know what I think about him,” Rafferty says, “and a lot depends on who he really is. What he does after he meets you might answer some questions. But I have to tell you that it could be dangerous. I don’t think it will be, but I can’t be certain. And at least we’ll walk in with our eyes open. So it’s up to you.”
Da says, “Everything I’ve done for weeks has been dangerous.”
“You’re a brave kid,” Rafferty says. He turns to Boo. “Let’s talk about what I need you to do tomorrow morning.”
“How many do you want?” Boo asks.
“Fourteen or fifteen, boys and girls. Is that a problem?”
Boo says, “You’re the one with the problems.”
TWO PAIRS OF feet, coming up. They’ve already checked the first floor. For a moment, Arthit had thought he might be able to get past them while they were checking out the apartments, slip down the stairs, and deal somehow with whomever they left at the door. But they were smarter than that. At the first-floor landing, there was a short silence, and then the fluorescent light came back on.
“Well, look at that,” said the authoritative voice. “Is the light out on the next floor?”
Arthit heard one pair of shoes go up three or four steps. “No,” said the younger voice. “It’s on.”
“Okay. You wait here. And take your damn gun out. You think you’re in line for dinner or something?”
“No, sir.”
“Don’t move, got it? If you hear something, you just stay here. Yell if you have to, but wait for me.”
“Fine.”
“And remember. He’s dangerous and he’s armed. Nobody’s going to get crazy if you shoot him.”
“But he’s-Do you really think-”
“Doesn’t matter what I think. It’s what I’ve been told.”
“Yes, sir.”
The door had closed, and Arthit had waited motionlessly for five or six minutes on the steps just above the third-floor landing until the older cop came back into the stairwell on the second floor and the two men began to climb. Shoes in hand, Arthit moved on flat feet, letting the noise below him drown out the sound of his own movement until he was at the padlocked door to the roof. He can go no farther.
It’s just a matter of time.
While the other two are still moving, he puts the bags at his feet, laying them down in slow motion so the plastic won’t crackle. On the second floor of apartments, the two cops go through the same routine, the younger one waiting in the stairwell while the older one goes into the hallway. As Arthit stands there, his back to the door to the roof, waiting for them to come, waiting for whatever will happen when they do, he realizes he feels nothing except an overpowering loneliness. For fourteen years Noi has been the first person he saw every morning, the person he held as he slept. The sound of her laughter was the world’s most beautiful music.
They were going to get old together.
She had put on lipstick for him. Before she sipped at the tea that she used to wash down the pills, she had put on the light pink lipstick he loved best. That morning, when she moved to his side of the breakfast table and rested her head on his shoulder, she had known it would be the last time.
Arthit finds he doesn’t care whether he lives or dies.
He waits, his body feeling as heavy and inert as stone, as they finish on the second floor and climb to the third. He can probably measure the rest of his life in minutes. The gun at his waist is sharp and hard against his stomach. He takes it out and looks at it for a second, then very slowly lays it down beside the bags. There’s no way he’s going to shoot a policeman.
The two cops climb the final steps to the third floor. Nothing remains between them and Arthit but a corner and a short flight of stairs. The door to the apartment hallway closes, and Arthit waits, his arms hanging down and slightly apart from his sides, his hands open and empty, with the palms facing outward.
Shoes scuff concrete. The younger cop comes around to the bottom of the stairs, his gun extended, and looks up.
Arthit stands there, waiting. He knows the young cop’s face, although he can’t put a name to it. They worked together on something, sometime.
For five or six very long seconds, the young patrolman stands perfectly still, staring up at Arthit. His eyes drop to the automatic on the floor and come up again to meet Arthit’s. Then, slowly, he transfers his gun from his left hand to his right. He works the free right hand into his trouser pocket, and Arthit follows the movement, expecting a throwdown gun or maybe a taser, but when the young cop’s hand comes out, it holds a fold of currency. He puts the gun barrel to his lips like a hushing finger and tosses the money underhand. The money transcribes a graceful arc and lands at Arthit’s feet. The young cop holds out his free hand, palm out-Wait there-then climbs three steps and turns his back to Arthit, listening.
After a couple of minutes, the door to the third floor opens, and the young cop makes a point of scraping his shoes against the concrete as he goes down the stairs and disappears around the corner. “Nothing up there except the door to the roof,” he says. “It’s padlocked from inside.”
“Okay,” says the older cop. “Maybe they’ve already got him down below.”
Arthit hears them descending. The moment he hears the street door swing shut, his legs fold beneath him and he finds himself sitting among the bags of clothes.
When the door opens, Miaow pushes around Rose and stops as though she’s walked into a window. Her eyes almost double in size as she sees Boo, and then-immediately-they jump to Da, and from Da to the baby in Boo’s lap. She says, “Ahhh, ahhhh.”
“Why are you down-” Rose starts to ask Poke, and then she sees Boo, too, and her smile fills her face. “Oh,” she says. “You’re here.”
“I-” Miaow says, and stops, her eyes moving back and forth. “I mean, you-”
“This is Da,” Boo says. “And the baby is named Peep.”
“Baby,” Miaow says, as though the word were in a brand-new language.
“Not mine,” Boo says. “Not really Da’s either.”
Rose says, “We should get upstairs, Poke. They were behind us when we came back. They’re going to expect to hear something.”
“Fine,” Rafferty says, heading for the door. “Coming, Miaow?”
Miaow gives him a look that could turn him to ash.
“Guess not,” Rafferty says. “We’ll pretend you’re pouting. For a change. Open the door quietly when you come in.” To Superman he says, “See you tomorrow.” The boy nods, but he’s looking at Miaow.
Rose says, “What’s all that stuff on your hand?”
“Tell you in the elevator,” he says. He closes the door behind them. In the hall he says, “And I have to tell you something else. About Noi.”
“WHAT HAPPENED TO your hair?” Boo says.
“I fixed it,” Miaow says. Her eyes go to Da again.
“I liked it better the other way.”
“Who cares?” Miaow says. Her fists are brown knots at her sides. “Who cares what you like? Where did you go? Where have you been? And who’s she?”
“I told you. She’s Da.”
“Who’s Da?”
Boo says, “Why don’t you ask Da?”
“I’m asking you.”
“He’s my friend,” Da says. “He got me away from some bad people.”
Miaow chews on the inside of her cheek for a moment. “How long have you known him?”
Da’s eyebrows contract. “How long?” she asks Boo.
“Couple of days.”
Da says, “It feels like a week.”
“What does he mean, it’s not your baby?” Miaow says. “What kind of bad people?” She abandons that line of questioning and turns her eyes to Boo. “Why did you go away?”
“I made a mistake. About Poke. I thought he was-you know, a bad guy.”
Miaow says, “Poke?”
“I was wrong. But I didn’t really go away, not at first. For a few months, I kept an eye on you. To make sure you were okay.”
“Did not,” Miaow says.
“I did.”
She gives him hard eyes. “I never saw you.”
“I was careful. And I had some other kids watch you from time to time.”
“If he wants to disappear,” Da says, “he just disappears.”
“I know that,” Miaow says. “I was with him for a long time. Not just two or three days, like you.”
“Miaow,” Boo says.
“He took care of me,” Miaow says, and suddenly she’s swiping at her cheeks with her forearm. “I was almost a baby, and he…he-” She breaks off, grabs air, and dives in again. “I thought…I thought you started again. Started the yaa baa, I mean. I thought you went away because you wanted that. More than you wanted anything. More than you wanted to-I don’t know-to stay with me. With us.”
“No,” Boo says. “I don’t use that now. Remember Hank Morrison?”
“Sure.” She scrubs her arm over her eyes as though she’s punishing them. Then she sniffles. “He helped Poke adopt me.”
“He got me into a monastery up north. The monks got me through it.”
She looks at him over the top of her arm. “A monastery?”
The corners of his mouth lift. “I meditated. I even ate vegetables.”
“But you’re back,” Miaow says. “You’re here. Why did you come back?”
“I belong here. Where else would I go?”
“It’s his forest,” Da says.
Miaow looks at Da as though she doesn’t understand, but then she nods. “It is,” she says. “But why are you here now? I mean here, in this apartment?”
“I came to ask Poke for help,” Boo says. “But it turns out I’m going to help him.”
“How?”
Boo lifts Peep to his shoulder and begins to pat the baby’s back. “I’m going to get you out of here.”
“A FIRE,” TON says.
“That’s what he looked for,” says Ren. “They checked the search history on the computer he used in the morgue at the Sun. He was looking for fires. He printed out stuff on four or five of them, a factory and some houses and a couple of slums.”
Ton is wearing a suit that cost more than three thousand dollars and looks every penny of it. He leans against the edge of the desk, the unbuttoned, silk-lined jacket hanging open in a way that gives Ren an almost sickening pang of envy. No matter what he does, no matter how much money he eventually makes, he will never in his life look like that, like a man who was born to wear expensive clothes.
Captain Teeth-Kai-has one earphone in place and is listening to Ton and Ren with the free ear. Now he swivels his chair around to face them and says, “So he’s looking for a fire? So what? Anyone could see that Pan’s been in a fire, with those hands.”
“He saw Pan’s hands the first time they met,” Ton says. “Why go looking for fires now?” He runs his own hand over his jaw as though checking on his shave. “Who did he talk to today?”
“The cop, Thanom,” Ren says. “And Wichat.”
“Thanom knows part of it,” Ton says, “but he’d never say anything, not after what he went through to erase those records.” He lowers his eyes, studying an area of the carpet. “Wichat might say things he shouldn’t-he’s stupid enough-but I doubt he knows much of anything. Still,” he says, “Wichat.”
“But you…” Ren says. He looks like he’s trying to hear something that’s just out of earshot.
“Yes? I what?”
“You gave him Wichat.”
“Of course I did. Anybody good would have found Wichat. When someone really digs into Pan-and they will if we continue-it’ll be somebody good. You’ve got to assume that the people you go up against will be good, or you’ll be caught stretching your willie when you should be wondering what’s around the corner. And after he talked to Wichat, he went to the morgue at the Sun?”
Ren says, “He called me to set it up.”
Ton straightens. “Timing,” he says. “Wichat doesn’t know what the fire means, any more than you two do, but he knows when it happened. He probably gave Rafferty a year, maybe two. Rafferty went looking for fires during that period. Anybody who puts it together is going to have a new set of questions.” He pushes himself away from the desk and puts both hands into his trouser pockets. Ren hears change jingle. “This exercise would have been worth it,” Ton says. He glances at Ren. “If it weren’t for having to kill the reporter. As it is, it may be worth it anyway.”
He goes to the door and opens it, but instead of going through, he lets it swing closed again and turns back to Ren. “Anything else? I mean anything at all.”
Ren swallows before answering. “His tail lost him twice today. Just for a few minutes.”
Ton blinks slowly, leaving his eyes closed for a second. “How? When? Where?”
“The first time was after he finished at the Sun. He went back to Silom, probably just going home, but he kept looking behind him, like he knew someone was back there.”
“He undoubtedly did,” Ton says, putting his teeth into it. “I more or less told him he’d be followed.”
“But Dit-that was who was following him-Dit figured that he shouldn’t let Rafferty see his face. Rafferty went into a building, and when he got into the elevator, he turned around again, so Dit ducked back, and he couldn’t see what floor Rafferty went to.”
Ton waits. After a long moment, he says, “And?”
Ren licks his lips and winces as his upper lip brushes the burn on his tongue. “And there was an exit on the side of the building. Rafferty must have used that, because Dit waited in front for a long time. After he found the side exit, he started working his way up and down the block. Checked all the stores, anywhere Rafferty might have ducked inside. About twenty, twenty-five minutes later, he saw Rafferty, back on the sidewalk. He’d done something to his hand. He was holding it like he’d broken it or something. And then Rafferty went into a building that has a lot of doctors in it and took the elevator to the sixth floor. About an hour later, he came back down with bandages on his hand.”
“This is wonderful,” Ton says. “He goes missing for a few minutes and then shows up injured, and we don’t know how. Where is he now?”
“In the apartment,” Kai says, pointing at his headphones. “With his wife.”
“Well, that’s something,” Ton says. He turns to Ren. “You said twice, we lost him twice.”
“Right after he came out with the bandages. Some street kids stole Dit’s wallet, and he chased them.”
Ton says, “I am surrounded by idiots. Pull Dit off and put somebody better on it. In fact, pull off everyone who might know who you’re working for.”
“Dit’s the only one. What do you want me to do with him?”
“I don’t care. Give him something unpleasant to do.”
“Anyway, Rafferty went right back to his apartment. We heard him. So nothing happened.”
“Dit should be thankful for that,” Ton says. He opens the door again. “We’ll give Rafferty one more day, just to see how much closer he gets. By tomorrow night we’ll be done with him. But don’t lose him again. Don’t lose any of them.”
“After tomorrow,” Ren says, “what should we do with him?”
Without looking back, Ton says, “You didn’t ask me that question, and I don’t ever want to hear how it was answered.” The door swings closed behind him.
Ren waits a minute or two to make sure Ton isn’t coming back. He gets up and goes to the door and opens it on an empty hallway. Then he closes it and says, “This makes me very uncomfortable.”
“What would it take to make you comfortable?” Captain Teeth asks. “It could have taken you years to get this close to the man. You’re almost living in his pocket.”
“That’s what makes me uncomfortable.”
“You know why. He couldn’t involve a bunch of people in this thing. It’s too…” His voice trails off.
“It’s too what?” Ren prompts. “Too dangerous? How about ‘Get rid of everyone who knows who we’re working for’?”
Captain Teeth puts the other earphone in place and swivels to face the console. With his back to Ren, he says, “I’ll think about it.”
BOO WATCHED ME to make sure I was all right, Miaow writes. Her face is glowing. For a long time after he ran away.
Rafferty reads the note and takes the pen. How long?
Miaow grabs the pen away from him and turns the page over. I don’t know. He had other kids watch me, too.
Did you see any of them? Rafferty writes.
No. I wasn’t looking. She chews on the end of the pen until Rafferty reaches out and pushes it away from her mouth. But nobody sees street kids, she writes. And she watches Rafferty read her sentence three or four times and then sit back and stare at the opposite wall.
Wild cards, he thinks again. Street kids can follow anyone.
Rafferty says, “I like the hair.”
Miaow says, “Really? You’re not just trying to make me feel better? You don’t think it looks dumb? And fake?”
Rose says in Thai, “It’s very stylish. It’s not supposed to look real, Miaow, not any more than lipstick is. And it catches the light well. Lots of highlights.”
“Honest? I mean, you really think so? Do you think the kids at school will, um…?”
“If they don’t like it,” Rafferty says, “it’ll just be because they’re envious.”
“Oh, come on,” Miaow says.
Rose says, “It makes you look older.”
The morning light pours in through the sliding door to the balcony, bouncing off the glass top of the coffee table to create a rectangle of sunlight on the ceiling. Other than the sunlight, nothing in the apartment is moving. The small tape recorder is hooked up, via its expensive connectors, to Rafferty’s amplifier, and the voices come out of the bookshelf speakers on either side of the empty room.
Down on the fourth floor, Rose says, in person, “This is ridiculous. It’s way too big.”
She is wearing a gray uniform jacket and matching slacks. The slacks have a black stripe down each side. Under the jacket are a white shirt and a black clip-on tie. Her shoes are cheap black lace-ups with rubber soles.
“Hair down inside your shirt,” Rafferty says. “All of it. Tie it back with a rubber band or something.”
“So? Everything will still be too big.” She pulls at the waistband of the pants. “I’m swimming in it.”
“Don’t worry, you won’t be.” Rafferty goes behind her and tries to gather her hair between his hands but gives up immediately. “Two-hand job,” he says. “I’m disqualified.”
“Do you actually think this will work?” She has tugged the back of the shirt away from her neck and is stuffing hair down inside it. “I look like a clown.”
“It’ll happen fast,” he says, “and we’ll set it up. Like a bluff in poker. They’ll see what we want them to see. They’ll hear a male voice just before they see you. They’ll put it together themselves and see a man for the three or four seconds you’re visible. And don’t forget, there will be other stuff going on.”
“But why is everything so big? Did Kosit get the wrong size?”
“No. You and Miaow each have three shirts, two pairs of pants, an extra pair of shoes, a couple of towels, and the other stuff on the list, right?”
“I put it together myself.”
“And you brought the wide scarf I took out of your closet.”
“It’s a shawl,” she says, “and yes, I have it, although I can’t imagine where I’m going to wear a cashmere shawl when I’m supposed to be running for my life.”
“You’re going to wear it under your shirt, tied around your middle. With all those extra clothes inside it. You’re going to be a guy with a gut. And the uniform will fit once you’ve got your belly on.”
She gives the collar a tug and puts on the cap. “So?” she says. “Is it me?”
“Tilt the cap back a little bit to close the gap between it and the collar.”
Rose uses both hands to reset the cap, being careful not to allow any hair to fall out of it. “Maybe I should just cut it off.”
“It’ll be fine. We’ll bobby-pin the cap so it can’t slip.”
“Listen to you,” she says. “I married a hairdresser.”
“You wish.”
“Poor Arthit,” Rose says. “How will he get by? She was the only thing he loved in the world.”
“I have to find him,” Rafferty says.
“Let him lick his wounds. He’s not someone who asks for help.”
“No, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to give him some. And I have to see whether there’s any way I can get him out of this jam with Thanom. Especially since it’s basically my fault.”
His cell phone rings. “Put the shawl on the table and put the stuff on it,” he says. “Try to get it even. You don’t want a lumpy stomach.” He opens the phone and says, “Yeah?”
“Snakeskin Industries,” Floyd Preece says. “Am I good or what?”
“I don’t know, Floyd. What’s Snakeskin Industries?”
“A snakeskin. It’s something that’s empty when it’s left behind. It’s the company that owned the factory that burned down, the one that made Buffy the Bunny, remember?”
“I remember. But I also remember, from reading the newspapers, that it was empty-it was a holding company that was held by another holding company, and nobody could identify any of the officers.”
“Yeah, well, Snakeskin didn’t own it when it burned down.”
“I’m not following you. You just said-”
“You’re right about the cops; they couldn’t find anything about the company that owned the place when the fire happened. The American corporation that made the bunnies or whatever they were leased the place, and the company they leased it from was a system of double and triple blinds. But eighteen months later the factory, the shell of it anyway, was sold, and the company it was sold to, the company that sold it a second time, was Snakeskin Industries.”
“I guess that’s interesting. Sort of.”
“Oh, it’s interesting,” Preece says. “Because of who Snakeskin sold it to.”
Rafferty waits for a second or two and then says, “This is an irritating pause.”
“They sold it to Pan.”
Rafferty watches Rose pile Miaow’s and her things in even layers as he thinks. “You’re right,” he says, “that qualifies as interesting. It’ll be even more interesting if you know who owns Snakeskin.”
“I don’t know who the Thai principal is, but a special permit was issued to Snakeskin Industries to operate in Thailand under partial foreign ownership.”
“Foreign as in?”
“As in a guy named Tatsuya Kanazawa. And, as you might guess from the name, old Tatsuya isn’t Thai.”
“Japanese,” Rafferty says, and a little jolt of electricity fizzes through him. “Is he-did you read anything about him being yakuza?”
“No,” Preece says patiently. “But it’s still morning.”
“And there was nothing on the other partner, the Thai partner?”
“No again. But Tatsuya’s part owner of another business in Bangkok, too.”
“Let me guess,” Rafferty says. “Steel.”
“Awwwww,” Preece says. “Tell me you didn’t already know all this.”
“You’ve done great, Floyd.”
“Money,” Preece says. “You were supposed to give me some last night.”
“I’ll call you later and let you know where to meet me.”
“You’d better,” Preece says. “Or I won’t tell you the rest of it.” He hangs up.
“I don’t know about this,” Rose says, looking down at the strata of stuff she’s spread over the shawl.
“Don’t worry about it,” Rafferty says. “You’re going to be a great-looking fat guy.”
“IT’S HOT DOWN here,” says the man who’s been assigned to Rose. “Gotta be thirty-one, thirty-two degrees.”
“You’re breaking my heart,” Captain Teeth says on the other end of the phone.
“All I’m saying, why can’t we take turns? One of us goes to get cool for a few minutes, then comes back and-”
“Not the plan,” Captain Teeth says. “The man wants everybody on the job.”
“Well, what are they doing? Does it sound like they’re coming out or what?”
“They’re sitting around talking about hair color.”
“Must be the little girl. She had it dyed red a day or two ago.”
“Apparently it looks great,” Captain Teeth says. “Stay where you are.” He closes the phone and drops it onto the console.
Out on the street in front of Rafferty’s apartment house, the man who’s been assigned to Rose watches a few street kids float by. Five or six of them. They’ve been up and down the street a couple of times, just straggling along, peering through the windows of parked cars and generally looking for trouble. One of them had asked him for money, and the man had shown the kids the back of his hand and told them to beat it. But they were back.
If he had his way, the man who’s been assigned to Rose thinks, they’d all be rounded up and put in jail. Little animals. They invade neighborhood after neighborhood, looking for pockets to pick, things to steal. Give real crooks a bad name. Lock them all in a cage, drop the key in the river, and drop the cage on top of it. Or do like they did in that Japanese movie, whatever it was called-Battle Royale, that was it-and strand them on an island and force them to kill one another until only one’s left. And then write a new ending and kill the one who’s left.
At the corner the kids turn around and drift back aimlessly, and suddenly one of the kids at the rear of the pack lets out a scream of warning, and about ten new kids round the corner at a run. The gang the man has been watching breaks into a full-out sprint with the others in pursuit. The ones in front look terrified. Two of the bigger boys in the group that’s chasing them are waving something that look like ax handles. They chase the smaller group like a pack of wild dogs.
The man settles back in his doorway to enjoy the show. The kids in front make a rapid turn to their right, as tightly knit as a flock of swallows, and disappear down the ramp into the garage beneath the apartment house. The other group, the larger group, follows.
A man in the garage bellows in Thai, “Out! Get out!” and a second later the kids erupt onto the street again, the groups mixed now into a single cloud of children, and there’s another deep shout, and a tall, fat guard in uniform runs out of the garage behind them, brandishing a billy club. The kids pick up the pace, and five or six seconds later they’ve all vanished around the corner, the guard in pursuit.
The man who’s been assigned to Rose realizes he’s stepped out into the sunlight to watch the spectacle, and he retreats back into the shade. For a few seconds, it occurs to him, he was so interested he hadn’t given a thought to how hot it is.
IN THE GARAGE, Rafferty puts his unbandaged hand up to the spot on his cheek where Miaow kissed him just before she joined the swarm of kids and charged up to the street, her ragged clothes fluttering as she ran. The sight produced a surprising pang. When he first met her, she’d been running with kids just like these.
He goes to the elevator and pushes the button for the fourth floor. Time for Part Two.
Sunlight as thin and unsatisfying as gruel, not even intense enough to throw shadows. The phone at Rafferty’s ear is slick with sweat, an aftereffect of Rose and Miaow’s escape.
“He’s not in,” says Porthip’s secretary.
“When will he be in?” The floor he spent so much time cleaning has gotten gritty again, and he drags his feet over it, enjoying the sound.
“I have no idea.”
Just for the hell of it, he kicks the stool that’s pinched his butt so many times and watches it topple over onto its side. He doesn’t think he’ll ever have to see it again, and he won’t miss it. “Is that usual?” he asks. “That you’d have no idea when he’ll be in?”
“No,” she says. “When he gets in touch with me, would you like me to tell him what this concerns?”
“He’ll know what it concerns,” Rafferty says. “Can’t you get in touch with him?”
The woman does not reply for a moment, and then she says, “No.”
“Really. Is that usual?”
“Oh, well,” she says. “It’ll be in the paper tomorrow anyway. He’s in the hospital.”
“Which one?”
“I can’t tell you that.”
“Sure you can.” He looks at his watch. About forty minutes more on the tape that’s running upstairs. He’ll have to go up, do his stuff in the apartment, and put in the next cassette. “Anyway, there’s only one hospital he’d go to.”
“Really,” she says neutrally.
“Sure. Bumrungrad.”
There’s a short pause, and she says, “Well, that’ll be in the paper, too. But before you get smug, Bumrungrad’s a very big hospital.”
“Right,” Rafferty says. “I’ll never manage to find him.”
He hangs up and calls Kosit.
“OUT OF THE question,” Dr. Ravi says. He’d answered the phone at Pan’s office. “You can’t just stop by and see him any time.”
“It’s not any time,” Rafferty says. “It’s half an hour from now.”
“This is a very bad day. Extremely busy.”
Rafferty has no trouble visualizing the little man, probably wearing another ambitiously pleated pair of slacks, seated behind the desk in the small office outside Pan’s big one. “Sorry it’s a bad day, but I’m coming anyway.”
“He won’t see you.”
“He’ll see me. Just say one word to him. Say ‘Snakeskin.’”
The pause is so long that Rafferty thinks Dr. Ravi has hung up. When he does speak, all he says is, “Half an hour?”
“Yes. But two other people are going to get there first, two kids. Let them in and have them wait. It’s important that they’re not out on the street when I arrive.”
“Any other orders?” Dr. Ravi says.
“That’ll do for now,” Rafferty says.
He folds the phone and sits on the stool, which he has put upright again. The day in front of him is a maze, an urban labyrinth with several ways in and probably only one safe way out. Within an hour Rose should call to tell him they’re with Boo’s kids down at the river. They’ll be fine down there, at least until dark, when he’ll move them. Assuming that he’s alive to do it.
The taped hand goes into spasms, sending a long, dark line of pain up his arm. When he stands up, the stool pinches him, and this time his kick sends it all the way to the opposite wall, where it breaks into pieces.
There are at least three places he needs to go. At some point he’ll have to dump the final tails, so no one from either side is riding his slipstream. He’s pretty sure he knows how to do it, but he’s been wrong a lot recently, so he turns his mind to it, and while he worries about that, he also worries about time. This is Saturday, and his bank will close early. He focuses on the schedule, trying to factor in imponderables, such as bad traffic or a sudden bullet in the back of the head.
Instead he finds himself worrying about Arthit. His best friend, alone for the first time in his adult life, is floating somewhere on the tide of the city, adrift over depths of abandonment and grief. Running from his loss, running from whatever it is that Rafferty has let out of the bottle. And as hard as it is for Rafferty to imagine Arthit needing help, he probably does. He probably needs several kinds of help.
HE CAN GIVE himself ten minutes, no more. The seconds tick off in his mind as he moves through the apartment silently while he and his wife and child chat with each other over the speakers.
From the headboard of the bed, he takes the Glock and the spare magazine. His closet yields up a pair of running shoes and his softest, most beat-up jeans, since he may have to wear them for some time. He chooses a big linen shirt that’s loose enough to conceal the gun. After he changes, he slips his cell phone into his pocket, where it will stay until he replaces it later in the day. He goes to the sliding glass door to close it but stands for a moment looking past the balcony and out over the city. Its sheer size is a comfort. It unfolds around him in all directions, block by block like giant tiles, fading eventually into the perpetual smog and water vapor that obscure the place’s real size, but he knows that it goes on and on. People have hidden in it for years, just another stone on the beach. He turns and goes over to the little tape recorder, rests his finger on the “stop” button, and waits for a natural pause.
“Hang on a minute,” he says out loud. He pushes “stop.” “I’m going out for a couple of hours, but I’ll get back in plenty of time for dinner. Anybody want anything?” There is no reply, since he’s pulling out the cassette in the recorder and slipping another in. He rewinds the new tape all the way to the beginning of the leader, which will give him twenty seconds or so of silence before Miaow and Rose start talking. He says, “Okay, then, bye,” pushes “play,” and goes out the door, putting some muscle into closing it so it can be heard. He’s still standing out there, waiting for the elevator, when he hears Rose’s voice through the door.
The new tape is a little less than two hours long, the product of their trip down to the fourth floor on the previous morning. He has that much time until the apartment goes silent. After that they’ll begin to wonder. When the curiosity gets too strong, they’ll come through the door.
And then they’ll probably be looking to kill people.
THE GUY BEHIND him isn’t trying to be inconspicuous. He stays two or at most three cars back all the way, a cell phone pressed to one ear. When Rafferty’s taxi stops at the gates to Pan’s earthly paradise, the follower cruises past slowly, then pulls in to the curb halfway down the block.
When the guard opens the gate, Dr. Ravi is already standing there. He lifts his left hand to study his watch, says, “Seven minutes late,” and turns to climb into the swan. “As I told you, time is very tight today.” The vehicle is moving while Rafferty still has one foot on the ground.
“Are my guests here?”
Dr. Ravi purses his lips around something small and sour and says, “They are.”
Rafferty says, “You were never poor.”
If the comment surprises Dr. Ravi, he doesn’t show it. “No. We weren’t rich, but we weren’t poor.”
“You managed to pay for Oxford.”
“Cambridge,” he says, biting the syllables. “I was on a partial scholarship.”
They are cresting the hill that blocks the view of the garden. “You don’t like street kids.”
Dr. Ravi’s shoulders rise and fall. “I don’t mind them in the street. In the house is a different matter.”
“Is that a sentiment your employer shares?”
“I have no idea. He was more like them when he was young than I was.”
“People change,” Rafferty says as the apple tree gleams its way into sight.
A diplomatic head waggle of disagreement. “In some ways. At the core, though, I think they stay the same.”
“Really? You don’t think power corrupts?”
Dr. Ravi makes a tiny adjustment to the steering column with no discernible effect. “It corrupts the corruptible.”
“Ah.” Rafferty sits back and watches the garden slide past. “You knew what Snakeskin meant.”
“Of course. The first thing I did when I came to work here was to go through the documents that spell out Khun Pan’s past.”
“Why would you do that?”
Dr. Ravi turns to face him for a moment, a glance that’s meant to put Rafferty in his place, and then looks back at the road. “I’m his media adviser, remember? I need to know what’s back there, what’s on record, in case something gets dredged up. It probably wouldn’t surprise you to know that there are people in the media who don’t like him.”
“So you’re an expert on his past.”
Dr. Ravi worries the idea for a few seconds and says, “To some extent.”
“Then how’d he get burned?”
They glide past the empty little village, as deserted now as Da’s is. The pigs watch them go with lazy attention, as though wondering whether the swan is edible. “That”-Dr. Ravi accelerates slightly, as though the talk has gone on too long-“you’ll have to ask him about that.”
THE FIRST THING he hears when he opens the front door is laughter, coming from the back of the house, the direction of Pan’s office. Then he hears voices, Pan’s surprisingly wispy one and Da’s. Whatever Pan says, Da starts laughing again.
She turns to smile a greeting at Rafferty as he pushes the door open. Pan is standing in the middle of the room with Peep in his arms. The baby’s dirty blue blanket looks incongruous against the yellow silk covering Pan’s chest, beneath the unsettling pink of his mouth. Boo lounges behind Pan’s desk with his hands folded over his nonexistent belly, apparently completely at ease, and Da occupies the chair Rafferty had claimed four days earlier, the afternoon before the gala fund-raiser.
“What a treat,” Pan says to Rafferty, although his smile is measured. “You have very interesting friends.”
“She’s from Isaan,” Rafferty says.
“Yes,” Pan says, “we’ve had a few minutes to get that on the table. And he’s a flower of the pavement, isn’t he?”
“Or a weed,” Boo says. He grins, but his eyes are watchful.
“Have they told you why I brought them here?”
“We just got here,” Da says. “And we don’t really know.”
“Well, it’s probably rude to bring up business so quickly, but Dr. Ravi says you’re pressed for time.”
Pan gives Peep a little bounce. “Dr. Ravi is an old woman. When you’re as rich as I am, time is elastic.”
“It’s elastic when you’re poor, too,” Boo says.
“That’s true, isn’t it?” Pan says. “I hadn’t thought of it, although I should have. I was poor long enough. But for everybody else, everybody who has something but not enough, time is rigid. It’s a floor plan for the day, isn’t it? You can only stay in each room so long.”
“So,” Rafferty says, “are we going to sit around and philosophize, or should we get down to it?”
Pan’s smile dims a notch. “You seem to be in more of a hurry than I am.”
“Cute baby, isn’t it?” Rafferty says.
“Adorable.” Pan raises Peep and makes a little kiss noise. Peep screws up his face, waves a fist, and starts to cry. Da rises and goes to take him, then carries him back to her chair.
“Did Da tell you where she got him?”
“Where she got him?” Pan’s smile widens again. “I’ve been familiar with those mechanics since I was, let’s see, about twelve.”
“He was handed to her,” Rafferty says. “Five days ago. By an old acquaintance of yours.”
Boo sits straighter behind the desk.
Still watching Peep, Pan says, “You think I know someone who gives away babies?”
“Well, you used to know him. His name is Wichat.”
Pan turns his head a few inches to the left and regards Rafferty as though he’s favoring his dominant eye. “You’ve been busy.” He leans back, resting part of his broad bottom on the edge of the desk. “If you wanted to know about all that, you could have talked to me.”
“You did work with Wichat.”
“Of course. I started out with him. Dozens of people could tell you that. I would have told you, if you’d asked. It’s no secret. I was a crook. There weren’t a lot of other employment opportunities for someone like me. And if you wanted to be a crook in those days, at least in the part of Bangkok I was being a crook in, you did business with Wichat. Actually, with Wichat’s boss, Chai. Is this going to be in the book?”
“Unless you can come up with something better.”
Pan seems suddenly to remember that Boo and Da are in the room. The smile returns, and he looks down at Da, who is holding Peep. The baby’s cries have faded to a damp snuffle. “Girls always look most beautiful holding babies,” he says.
Rafferty says, “Not a really contemporary point of view.”
Pan lets his gaze linger on Da for a moment, and then he says, “I’d rather it weren’t in the book, but if it is, you should be very clear on the point that I’ve had nothing to do with Wichat, or anyone like Wichat, for twenty years. I have no idea whether Wichat is-what?-giving out babies? Why would anyone give out babies?” He tugs at the crease in his sky-blue slacks. “And why tell me about it now?”
“I’m sorry,” Rafferty says. “I haven’t done this right. We’re actually here to ask for your help.”
Pan’s eyebrows climb half an inch. “Help.”
“See, this is what I think is happening. Wichat is buying babies from poor families, some of them probably Cambodian, and selling them to rich people, to farang. And he stashes the kids in the interim with female beggars. He hides them in plain sight and even makes a little extra money. Da says people give more to-”
“A woman with a baby,” Pan says with badly masked impatience. “Obviously. But how in the world do you think I can help?”
“I’m not completely sure,” Rafferty says. He leans against the wall beside the door. “Da and Peep ran away from Wichat’s guys because she was going to get raped. Boo helped them escape. And of course they have something that belongs to Wichat, which is to say Peep. So they’re on the run now, and I’m hiding them.”
Pan lets his eyes drift back down to Da and Peep. Behind him, Boo looks past him at Rafferty, his eyebrows elevated in a question. Pan says, “Why? Why are you hiding them?”
“I owe Boo a favor. So I guess the question is whether you can do anything, considering that you used to be buddies with Wichat, to get him to let go of Da and Peep, just stop searching for them.”
Pan surveys the room, not really looking at anything. “I suppose what he really wants is the baby. Why not return it to him?”
Da says immediately, “No.”
“Right,” Pan says. “Of course not. Well, you say he’s for sale, right? If it’s just about money, if Wichat just doesn’t want to lose his profit, then I can probably do something, maybe compensate him. How much is he getting?”
“Thirty to fifty thousand U.S.”
“You’re joking.”
“That’s my best guess,” Rafferty says.
“Still,” Pan says, “even if I bought Peep for Miss…Miss Da here, Wichat might be more worried about what she could tell people. Especially if he’s making that much money.”
“I think he is,” Boo says. “Both making that much money and worried about Da talking to people.”
Pan’s eyes flick to Boo as though he’s surprised at the certainty in the boy’s voice. “So, you see, it’s a little awkward. If I talk to Wichat, let’s say to offer to buy Peep, then he knows that I’m in touch with these kids. It opens up a raft of questions. That’s awkward. He and I aren’t friends anymore.”
“If you say so,” Rafferty says.
“Let me think about it,” Pan says. “They’re safe for the moment, I suppose?”
“I think so.”
“Would they be safer here?”
“I don’t know,” Rafferty says, watching Pan’s eyes. “Maybe.”
“Well, where are they staying now?”
“In my apartment house. An empty unit, down on the fourth floor.”
“Do you have security? Is there a doorman or anything?”
“It’s not that kind of apartment house,” Rafferty says.
“Maybe here, then,” Pan says. “If there’s one thing I have a lot of, it’s guards.”
Rafferty says, “What do you guys think?”
“I like it at your place,” Boo says. It’s what Rafferty told him to say if the question came up. “We don’t get in anybody’s way.” He looks at Da, who nods.
“Fine,” Pan says. “I’ll think about Wichat. I’m sure something will come to me.”
“That’s all we can ask,” Rafferty says. He pushes himself away from the wall. “You kids mind waiting for me outside? You can walk down to the village. I’ll be out in a minute.” He turns to Pan. “That okay with you?”
“Sure. Just don’t get too close to the pigs. Shinawatra can be aggressive.”
Da says, “I know all about pigs.” Then she says, “Shinawatra? Like the prime minister?”
“I’ll explain it later.” Rafferty turns his back to Pan and opens the door to let them out. With his left hand, he pulls the automatic from his pants, and as Boo passes him, Rafferty glances down at it. Boo follows Rafferty’s eyes and takes the gun without missing a step. When Rafferty closes the door and turns back to Pan, nothing in the big man’s face suggests that he registered the transfer.
“So?” Pan says. He turns and goes behind his desk. He sits and pulls a drawer open.
“Da tell you about how they turned off her town’s river?”
“Actually, the boy told me. Terrible, terrible.” He takes the tube of lip balm out of the drawer and applies it. “The sort of thing that should never be allowed to happen.”
“What can you do about it?”
“Me?” Pan drops the tube back into the drawer. “I have no formal power.”
“And if you did?”
“Oh, well. If we’re going to be hypothetical, then hypothetically, I’d prevent it.”
“Would you give them their river back?”
Pan shakes his head in irritation. “It’s done. It’s over. What I’d do is make sure it never happens again.”
“What do you mean, over? A few bulldozers, an afternoon’s work, they’d have their river back. And how long could it take, how much could it cost, to rebuild a few shacks like the ones you put up in that postcard village in your front yard?”
“That’s not the point. The money’s been spent, the golf course has been built, probably a hotel put up. The people who did this are powerful. They’re not going to let go of it. They’ve got clout.”
“In short,” Rafferty says, “it wouldn’t be expedient.”
“You’re oversimplifying, and you know it. The point is to prevent it next time.”
Rafferty gives it a minute, turns and takes a circuit of the office. When he’s facing Pan again, he says, “So. How’d you burn your hands?”
“Sooner or later,” Pan says. He sounds weary. “I knew you’d bump up against that sooner or later. I told you I was in protection, right?”
“Right. With Wichat’s boss, Chai.”
“Chai,” Pan says. “That was a guy. Balls of steel. That was when we had real gangsters, not store dummies like Wichat.”
“Wichat means business.”
“Yeah? You talk to him?”
“Sure. I’ve talked to half a dozen people on the yellow list. A lot of them have wondered how you got burned.”
“Right, the burns. One of the women I was protecting had a three-wok restaurant on the curb, and some guys who had wandered onto the wrong block tried to rob her. I was just down the street. Protection, right? If I’m extorting money for protection, the least I can do is protect them. So I…um, got involved, and while I was taking care of the first guy, the second guy threw a wok at me. Full of hot oil.” Pan opens the top two buttons of his shirt and shows Rafferty an expanse of shiny, hairless flesh. “So naturally, like a total idiot, I reached out and tried to catch it. Not just my hands, but all the way up my arms and across my chest. Hurt like nothing else in my whole life.”
“So,” Rafferty says, “it happened back when you were working with Wichat. Before the Mounds of Venus.”
“That’s right.” Rafferty holds Pan’s gaze until Pan looks down at his shirtfront. He rebuttons the shirt and pulls a cigar out of his pocket. He centers it in the moist-looking mouth and fires up the smoke.
When Rafferty feels as if the silence has been stretched far enough to snap, he says, “Uh-huh.”
Pan drags on the cigar with every evidence of being completely absorbed in it, but when he finally looks up at Rafferty, he has the eyes of someone who suspects that the guy across the card table has just filled the holes in his straight. “You asked Ravi about Snakeskin,” he says.
“Actually, I didn’t. I just said the word to see whether it would persuade him to let me in. And it did.”
“How interesting,” Pan says. “You know, I’m beginning to wonder whose side you’re on.”
“What a coincidence,” Rafferty says. “So am I.”
Hang on to the gun,” Rafferty says. “Just in case. I’ll get it later.”
The three of them are walking the curving path to the front gate, since no swans were volunteered. Da carries Peep in both arms, staring openmouthed at the garden gleaming in the sun to her right. Boo has the gun wedged into the pocket of his too-large jeans, covered by the tail of his shirt.
“Why do I want a gun?” Boo says. “We’re leaving.”
“I’m leaving first, and you’re waiting about five minutes. There’s someone watching me, and I don’t want him seeing you. I don’t want anyone to see you.”
“Why not?”
“Tell you later.”
Instead of answering, Boo reaches over and slides a fingertip down the side of Da’s neck. She shrugs as though there’s a spider crawling on her, but the smile gives her away. “But the gun?” Boo asks.
“In case they try to keep you here.”
Da turns away from the ruby light of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and looks across Boo at Rafferty. “Do you think they will?”
“No,” Rafferty says. “But right now I can’t come up with a single thing that would surprise me.”
CAPTAIN TEETH SAYS, “He’s at Pan’s.”
“That’s not a problem, not now.” Ton’s Saturday-morning outfit is a splendid pair of beige slacks with an almost invisible herringbone weave and a navy silk blazer that sports gold buttons. From his seat at the console, Ren figures they’re probably real gold. Ton checks his cuffs and tugs the left one another tenth of a millimeter out of the jacket sleeve. “Where are the females?”
“At home,” Ren says, holding up the earphones. “Being boring.”
“I’ll be at the club,” Ton says. “I’ve got the cell, but don’t call unless it’s important. I’ll be back in a few hours.”
A cell phone rings, and Captain Teeth fishes his from his pocket and listens for a moment. “He’s coming out of Pan’s. Flagging a cab.”
“Who’s following him?” Ton asks.
“Nobody you know.”
“Good,” Ton says. He pushes the door open. “I’m off.”
When it has swung completely closed, Ren says, “Off to brunch.”
“It’s Saturday,” Captain Teeth says. “Tell me you wouldn’t rather be at brunch.”
“Me?” Ren drops the headset onto the console, leans forward, and rests his head on his crossed arms. “Would I rather be at brunch? I’d rather be anywhere. I’d rather be in a Burmese prison.”
“FLOYD,” RAFFERT SAYS, the phone squeezed between ear and shoulder. “Got another question for you.”
“You got some money that belongs to me, too,” Floyd Preece says. “Shoulda paid me by now.”
“Coming right up. Listen, this is a very important question, and you don’t give me the answer until I hand you the money, okay?”
Preece pauses, probably looking for the catch. “Let’s hear it,” he says at last.
“What’s being done with the factory right now?”
“That’s it? I mean, that’s the big question?”
“You want something harder?”
“No, no. Happy to get paid for nothing. I could answer you right now. I won’t, not till I’m a little richer, but I could.”
“Yeah, well, save it until I give you the money.”
“And when will that be?”
Rafferty looks up and down the street to make sure he’s still unaccompanied. “Well, next stop is the bank.”
“ALL OF IT,” he says.
The teller takes the withdrawal slip. The amount to be withdrawn is blank, since Rafferty has no idea how big the “advance” was. The teller says, “You’re closing the account?”
“If emptying will close it, I guess so.” It’s nearly 1:00 P.M., closing time on Saturday, and he’s one of the last customers in the bank. He’d like the place to be much more thickly populated, absolutely jammed with potential witnesses. This is the stop that worries him most.
Punching keys with bright orange nails, the teller says, “Has our service been unsatisfactory in some way?”
“Excuse me?” Rafferty had been looking back, through the picture window that shows him a long, hot-looking rectangle of Silom. The sun is in full beam now, showing off to a world that was already hot enough. Lots of people, a normal crowd for the weekend, sweat their way past the window, going in both directions. “No, no. You’ve all been great. Seriously. I’d live here, if I could.”
“Live here?” The teller has the beginning of a smile on her lips.
“Right in the lobby,” Rafferty says, checking the sidewalk again. “Nice and quiet, good class of people. Put an easy chair over there, get a key to the restroom, have meals sent in.”
“All by yourself?” the teller asks, glancing sideways at him. She’s in her early thirties, tailored, with every hair in place, but something in the way she looks at him makes it easy for Rafferty to imagine her barefoot in some green field, a little perspiration gleaming on her face.
“Oh, no,” Rafferty says, banishing the image. “With my money.”
The teller leans forward and peers at the screen.
“Problem?” Rafferty says.
She comes up at him with a bright bad-news smile. “I’m sorry,” she says, “but I have to talk to my supervisor.”
“Something wrong?”
“Oh, no. Just…um, big withdrawal. It has to be authorized.” She gets up.
“Fine.” Rafferty feels the lightness where the Glock used to be and wishes he owned a spare. He turns back to the window, puts his hand into his pants pocket, and finds the 3 on the touch pad of his phone, which he’s assigned to Kosit. He presses it down and counts to five to activate the speed-dial function. After ten seconds or so, long enough for one ring, he hopes, on Kosit’s phone, he disconnects and goes back to scanning the sidewalk. He doesn’t recognize anyone on the street.
Yet.
The teller is in a rear office, visible through a window, talking to a fat man at a desk. The fat man scrabbles at the keyboard of his computer, studies the screen, and then picks up a telephone. The teller stands there for a moment, waiting for another instruction, then turns and comes back through the door.
“It won’t be much longer,” she says. She sits down, takes a strand of hair, wraps it around her finger, and checks the ends. “Sorry to make you wait.”
Rafferty is now the only customer in the bank. The other tellers are counting out, snapping rubber bands around stacks of currency, and slipping dust covers over their terminals. He’d known that the withdrawal would attract attention eventually, but he hadn’t figured it would happen in real time.
“I’m going to be late,” he says. “Either let’s wrap this up in a minute or two or let’s forget it and I’ll come back on Monday.”
“I’m so sorry. Let me go talk to him.” And she’s up again, on her way back to the fat man’s office.
The guys at the apartment, Rafferty thinks. They’re three minutes away. They’ve got phones. But Rose and Miaow are talking in the apartment, and he doesn’t think Ton’s controllers would move the watchers while they’re hearing-
It feels as if his stomach plummets two feet.
Did he plug in the tape recorder?
Rose’s voice has dropped several tones, abandoning its normal alto in favor of something that’s beginning to sound like a drug-wobbled baritone. She finishes her sentence, and there is a long pause. When Miaow answers, her voice is almost as low as Rose’s, and her words have a kind of ripple, like something seen underwater.
“Hey,” Captain Teeth says to Ren. “Listen to this.”
Ren puts on his own headset, squints at the sound for a second, turns up the volume, closes his eyes, opens them again, yanks his headset off, throws it onto the console, and says, with considerable vehemence, “Shit.” He meets Captain Teeth’s gaze. “Brunch or no brunch,” he says, “he’s gotta know about this.” He reaches for his phone, and it rings. He grabs it.
“Yes?” he says.
“I just got a call,” Ton says. “Rafferty’s withdrawing all the money. It’s the Thai Fisherman’s Bank on Silom, around the corner from the apartment. I think he’s going to run. Get the other two guys over there right now.”
“The conversation in the apartment,” Ren says. “It’s a tape.”
Ton says nothing for long enough that Ren asks, “Are you there?”
“I’m here. That means the woman and the girl are gone. He’s the only one we’ve got. I’ll have them stall him in the bank. I want those men there right now. They should try to take him.”
Ren says carefully, “Take him.”
“Take him,” Ton says, as though he’s talking to an idiot. “Get him under control. Take him somewhere. Are we speaking different languages?”
“And if they can’t? I mean, if he resists? Or if he goes nuts? What happens when they get him where they’re-”
“Just make me happy,” Ton says, and disconnects.
“He wants us to make him happy,” Ren says, tossing his phone onto the console. “Who’s making us happy?” He gets up and goes behind Ton’s desk and sits in the big chair. “If Rafferty’s dead, the man doesn’t need us. We could be hanging in the breeze.”
“You worry too much,” Captain Teeth says. He gets up. “Where is he? I’ll go over there myself.”
“Thai Fisherman’s Bank, Silom.”
Captain Teeth checks the holster in the middle of his back. When he’s satisfied, he slips into a sport coat and heads for the door. As he goes through it, he says, without looking over his shoulder, “If he catches you in that chair, you’ll need a new ass next time you sit down.”
THE SWEAT POPS on Rafferty’s upper lip in less than a heartbeat. He’d been timing himself in the apartment, staying within his ten-minute limit, hurrying to get to Pan’s early enough to let him come here so he could walk into a trap. And he hadn’t done the most important thing. He’d left the tape recorder running on batteries. He hadn’t plugged it in.
He turns to face the sidewalk. Still busy, still full of people he doesn’t recognize.
And then he sees one he does recognize, the man who was driving the car behind him all the way to Pan’s. He’s leaning against a parked truck, doing nothing. Looking everywhere except at the window.
“Umm,” says the teller, and Rafferty turns to her.
“You’ve been banking here a long time, right?” Her face is full of uncertainty.
“Years.”
“I see you in here sometimes,” she says. “With a little girl?”
“My daughter.”
“That’s what I thought.” She picks up a pad of old photocopies that have been turned blank side up and stapled together to create a scratch pad. She begins to draw a girl’s face, all big eyes and long curling hair. She inks a heart above the girl’s head, then several more, a little cloud of hearts floating in midair. Without looking up, she says, “It’s a police hold.”
“Police.”
“That’s who he’s talking to. It was on the computer. A police number to call for any withdrawal from your account for more than two thousand U.S.”
“It’s a mistake of some kind,” Rafferty says. He needs to mop his forehead, but he doesn’t want to draw the attention of the man in the office. “Was there a name?”
“No,” she says. “But I’m sure you’re right. It’s a mistake.”
“Of course it is.” The teller’s station is behind a plate of glass, and by taking a step to his left, Rafferty can see a reflection of the window that opens onto the street, but not clearly enough to identify any individuals. He looks instead for quick movement. “You draw well,” he says, his eyes on the reflection.
“I draw like every other girl in Thailand,” the teller says. “We all imitate Japanese anime.”
“I like the heart.” Someone hurries past the window, head down.
“Which heart? There are five of them.”
Rafferty focuses through the glass at the drawing. “The first one,” he says. “The big one. I like big hearts.” He has nothing he can use as a weapon.
“We all do,” the teller says. “But try to find one. Ah, here he comes.”
And the fat man has come out of his office, wearing a smile that looks like it was crimped into his face with a vise. Circles of sweat turn his white shirt translucent beneath the arms.
“Sorry, sorry,” he says. “Just a bit of delay.” He looks down at the scratch pad, at the girl’s face with the hearts around it, and winces. “Do you have enough in your drawer?”
The teller says, “No,” in a tone that makes it clear that the answer was obvious.
“I’ll get the rest from the vault,” the fat man says. “Get started. Give the man his money.”
“Yes, sir.” She slides the cash drawer open, pulls out a three-inch stack of thousand-baht bills, and drops it into the counting machine. The bills flip by as the total on the readout increases. “That’s five hundred twenty thousand baht,” she says. “We need another seven hundred thousand. How are you going to carry all this?”
“Carefully,” Rafferty says. It’s more money than he’d expected-about forty thousand dollars.
“You’ll never get it into your pockets,” she says. “I’ll lend you a bag, okay?” She lifts an inexpensive nylon bag above the counter. “It’s my shopping bag. I’m going to buy groceries after I punch out here.”
Reflected in the glass partition, two men peer through the window behind him. “I’ll buy it from you.”
She gives him a smile. “Just bring it back.” The fat man returns, a banded stack of bills in each hand.
“If it’s humanly possible,” Rafferty says. He turns around, and the men at the window separate quickly. One of them turns away to show the back of his head, and the other slides out of sight to the right. The first one he saw, the one who had been following him, is still leaning against the car, so there are at least three of them-the one who was behind him, and the two who were supposed to be watching Rose and Miaow, which certainly means that the tape recorder ran out of juice and wound down.
Which, in turn, means that it’s open season.
And there might be more out there. He hears the bills snapping through the machine behind him.
“Here we are,” the teller says. She holds up the nylon bag, which has what look like coffee stains on it. “I’ll go around to the door and give it to you,” she says. “It’s too thick to slip under the partition.”
“Thanks,” he says. He follows her, and she buzzes the door open and hands him the bag, which is heavy enough to tug his uninjured hand downward.
She says, “Take care.”
“I’ll try,” Rafferty says. “It’s murder out there.”
“I think the door’s locked,” she says. She precedes him, rattles the door once, and slips a key into the lock. Pulling it open, she steps aside and gives him a little back-and-forth wave.
Rafferty smiles, fills his lungs with air, and goes through the door.
The day is even brighter than it had seemed through the tinted windows of the bank. It takes him a second to adjust to the glare and scan the sidewalk. The man leaning against the car turns away as Rafferty’s eyes find him. Rafferty looks left and sees one of the men who had been waiting outside the apartment building coming toward him, one hand in his pocket. This one doesn’t look away. His eyes drift beyond Rafferty, who turns to see a third man coming from the other direction. The third man doesn’t have a hand hidden in a pocket, so Rafferty heads toward him, moving briskly, and then something catches his eye from the left, and he sees Captain Teeth getting out of a cab.
Captain Teeth is shorter than Rafferty remembers him, and wider. He’s got the chest and shoulders of someone who bench-presses Chevrolets. All that overdeveloped muscle tissue has been wrapped in a sport coat, and in this heat he might just as well be wearing a sandwich board that says HEAVILY ARMED. He throws some bills at the cabdriver and makes for the curb.
Rafferty carefully slips the bag over the bandaged hand, slides it up his arm, and crooks his elbow so the money dangles from his forearm. He puts his good hand under his shirt and leaves it there, at waistband level, and strides forward purposefully. The man who is coming toward him falters, his eyes on the concealed hand. The question is clear in his face: keep moving toward Rafferty and maybe get shot now or back off and maybe get shot later by his friends? Getting shot later wins, and the man veers off to his right, toward the parked cars.
That leaves the other two and Captain Teeth, and Rafferty doesn’t think Captain Teeth is going to be so easy to bluff.
When in doubt, take the offensive.
Rafferty moves left, on a course to intercept the man who chose being shot later. The man works farther to his right, his eyes flicking side to side, until he’s almost brushing a parked car, and then Rafferty cuts behind him and steps up against him, circling the man’s neck with the arm that has the bag hanging from it and pushing the index finger of his good hand hard into the man’s back. The man throws his hands into the air spasmodically, striking a glancing blow off Rafferty’s bandaged left, and Rafferty emits a hiss of pain that loosens the other man’s knees. Rafferty has to hold him up until the man can get his feet under him again. Captain Teeth is closing fast, reaching back beneath his sport coat, undoubtedly for a gun.
“Stop there,” Rafferty says.
Captain Teeth comes to a halt about five feet away. He keeps his hand hidden. “You think I care if he dies? Shoot him. When he falls, I’ll have a target.”
“Move that hand,” Rafferty says, “and I’ll shoot you instead.”
Captain Teeth bares his awful incisors in a grin and says, “Watch the hand move,” and then his eyes lift and widen, focused behind Rafferty, the teeth disappear, and his hand comes out empty and open. He takes a few steps back. Something cold noses the nape of Rafferty’s neck.
“Drop the gun.” The tone is businesslike.
“Love to,” Rafferty says. “But I haven’t got one.”
“Hands behind you.” The gun is pushed half an inch forward. “Now.”
“Okay, okay.” He lets go of the man he’s been holding, who stumbles away and then turns to face him. Whatever he sees over Rafferty’s shoulder, it freezes him.
“Don’t move,” says the man behind Rafferty. The bag is lifted from his arm, and something circles his wrists, and he hears a sharp click. The cuff is tight around the bandages on his left wrist. “You two,” the man says, “go.” Captain Teeth and the man Rafferty has been holding pivot in unison and retreat down the sidewalk without a backward glance.
“You’re going to turn around, and I’m going to stay behind you,” the man says. “Don’t do anything stupid. Don’t do anything I might think is stupid.”
A sharp tug yanks Rafferty’s cuffed hands to one side, and he turns, the other man pivoting with him so the gun never loses contact with the back of Rafferty’s neck. A circle of people has gathered around them, a safe five or six paces away, their eyes wide. “Walk now. Toward the van.”
Rafferty heads for a vehicle that’s double-parked in the first traffic lane. It’s a police van, its windows covered in a silvery reflective coating. The rear door has been slid open. Another man in a police uniform comes around the front end of the van. It takes Rafferty a moment to recognize him as Kosit.
“Hey,” Rafferty says, and the gun probes the back of his neck as though it’s looking for a path between the vertebrae.
“That’s stupid,” the man says.
The face Kosit turns to Rafferty as he approaches the van is all cop. Without a glimmer of recognition, he yanks hold of Rafferty’s shirt and pulls him toward the open door, and Rafferty sees another man in the van, hunched down on the floor behind the driver’s seat. He tries to stop, but the man behind him adds a shove to Kosit’s pull, and with his wrists cuffed, all Rafferty can manage is a stagger-step to keep from falling forward. Kosit grabs his shoulders, puts an expert hand on top of his head, and pushes him down onto the seat of the van, and as the door slams shut, the man crouched behind the driver’s seat brings his head up and regards Rafferty.
It’s Arthit.
From the corner where she had folded the cashmere shawl to give her something to sit on-Rafferty was right, it had come in handy-Rose watches the kids. The younger ones are manic, adrenaline-jacked from the adventure of the escape. They’ve replayed the chase, argued over their speed and their acting skills, and they’ve had occasional words about the value of their individual contributions. A couple of these ended in minor tussles, broken up by the older kids, who are maintaining a disdainful cool that’s either assumed or, in the case of a few of the more frayed and weathered of them, hard-earned.
Miaow had tried to join in the roughhousing for a while, but the kids kept their distance from her. None of them had been with Boo when she was, and they’re all strangers to her. It’s obvious that they don’t see her as one of them. They skirmished with one another, but they treated her as though she were made of glass and already chipped. Watching them, watching her daughter try to enter the field of play, Rose is struck by how much Miaow has changed. The filthy, tattered clothes can’t conceal the differences between her and the others. It’s not just the weight she has gained, although she probably weighs 20 percent more than any other kid her height in the room. It’s not just the newly colored and carefully cut hair, or her obvious cleanliness. She moves differently than they do. Her reactions aren’t as fast, and she seems to have a narrower awareness. Boo’s kids appear to be able to track simultaneously everything that’s happening in the big room, while Miaow focuses only on what’s in front of her. Rose sees the kids behind her and on either side exchange glances, and it’s obvious that the unspoken topic is Miaow.
Now Miaow is sitting beside Rose, her head lowered, plucking at the shawl. Her lower lip protrudes, and there are little dimples in her chin. Her end of the conversation, when Rose attempts to start one, is limited to monosyllables, some of them not even words. Looking down at the top of her adopted daughter’s head, at the part in her hair, straighter-as Rafferty once said-than the path of a subatomic particle, Rose feels her heart swell. She feels as if her heart has a color, a kind of sad, bruised purple. She slides a hand over Miaow’s, but Miaow pulls away and puts her hand in her lap. It looks lonely there.
Rose gives up and rests her back against the wall. The kids are settling down now, and the temperature in the room, which was fearsome when they arrived, is dropping slightly as the light outside dims. Rose looks at her watch-four o’clock.
Where is Poke?
She pulls out her phone to dial him and then thinks better of it. He was going to buy a stolen phone and use that to call her, in case they-whoever “they” are-are triangulating on his old number. Maybe he just hasn’t bought the new phone yet. She’s trying to visualize “triangulating” when the door to the shack opens and Boo and Da come in, Boo carrying Peep in the crook of one arm as if he’s had a baby in his arms his entire life. The other hand is full of white plastic bags, as are both of Da’s. Even across the room, Rose can see Da follow Boo with her eyes, watching him as though he changes into something more interesting every moment he’s in sight. Exactly, Rose thinks, what Miaow doesn’t need.
Miaow sits bolt upright as the door opens. She leans forward, trying to shorten the distance between them without getting up.
But Boo doesn’t even look in their direction. He has stopped and bought supplies: brooms, toilet paper, bags of food, bottled water, and he begins immediately to parcel them out and give orders, delegating three kids to clean out the toilet room, handing money to another and assigning five to go with her and bring back hot food. The smallest kids are handed the new reed brooms and told to sweep the dirt floor.
Not until the the random energy in the room has been harnessed and the kids are all engaged in their tasks does Boo lift his eyes to them and wave them over. Rose gets up and then leans down to pick up the shawl, and by the time she straightens up again, Miaow is already all the way across the room, standing next to Boo.
“Let’s go outside,” he says. “It gets dusty in here when they sweep.” He turns, Da following in almost perfect synchronization, and Rose and Miaow trail along behind.
“How long have you all lived here?” Miaow asks as she passes through the door.
Rose can’t hear the beginning of the boy’s reply, but when she comes out into the late-afternoon sunshine, he is saying “…maybe three or four more days, and then we’ll move.”
Miaow says, “Where?”
Boo laughs. “You have forgotten,” he says. “When did I ever know where we’d go next? What did I used to say?”
“Whatever opens up,’” Miaow says.
“Well, that’s where we’re going.”
“Why do you have to move?” Da says.
“Too many kids in one place. People see us. Sooner or later somebody says something to the cops or the weepies who help us poor kids so they can make enough money to buy SUVs and live in villas. Then they show up in the middle of the night and we all have to run, and sometimes one or two of us get caught.”
“The small ones,” Miaow says.
“Listen to that,” Boo says. “You haven’t completely turned into a schoolgirl. There’s still a little bit left.”
“I haven’t-” Miaow begins.
“Even with that hair.”
Miaow’s hand goes to her hair. “There’s nothing wrong with my-” Suddenly she’s blushing.
“What’s next, skin-whitening cream? Now you’re an American?” He is keeping his voice light, but Rose can see the tension in the cords of his neck.
“Wait,” Miaow says. “I’m not trying-”
“You’re not?” he demands. “Okay, you’re not on the streets now. But why pretend to be something you aren’t?”
“I don’t know what-”
“Have you told anybody at your school about it?” He squeezes the word “school” as though he’s trying to juice it. “Does anyone know you were on the street? If I showed up, would you introduce me to your friends?”
“But…” Miaow says, “but they’re…those kids, they’re-”
“Leave her alone,” Da says.
“No,” Miaow snaps, just barely not stamping her foot. “Don’t you tell him not to…uhh, not to talk to me the way he…um, the way he wants to, to talk to…” And then she’s crying, and she turns to Rose and wraps her arms around her mother and buries her head against Rose’s blouse.
“Well,” Rose says, looking at Boo. Miaow’s shoulders are shaking, but she’s absolutely silent.
Da says, “That was mean.”
“She has a different life now,” Rose says to Boo.
Boo says, “Obviously,” but he doesn’t meet her eyes.
Rose’s phone rings.
She looks at the number on the display but doesn’t recognize it. She thinks, Poke’s new phone, and answers, putting her free hand on the back of Miaow’s neck, which feels damp and hot. When she says, “Hello,” there is no reply. The line is open, but the person at the other end doesn’t speak. “Hello?” She waits a minute, listening to the hiss of distance, and then closes the phone and puts both arms on Miaow’s shoulders. Boo looks out over the river, as though he wishes he were somewhere else.
Da rubs her arms as though she’s cold and says, “Someone is watching us.”
CAPTAIN TEETH SAYS, “She answered. She’s there.”
Ren doesn’t even look at him. “Where?”
“Wherever the phone is.”
“That’s helpful,” Ren says. He is back behind the big desk, even though he knows that Ton could walk in at any moment.
“It’s something,” Captain Teeth says. “She probably thinks the phone is safe unless she uses it. She doesn’t know it’s searching for a tower all the time. I wanted to make sure she hadn’t just left it somewhere to lead us in the wrong direction.”
“Goody,” Ren says acidly. “You may get your chance with her yet.”
“Fine,” Captain Teeth snaps. “You worry about what’s going to happen to us if the man gets everything he wants. I’ll worry about what happens to us if he doesn’t. Maybe we can’t find Rafferty, but we know how to find the woman, once the man calls whoever it is at the cell-phone company. Which probably means we know where to find the kid, too.”
Ren says, “We know too much.”
Captain Teeth says, “So figure out how to live through it.”
THE ROOM SMELLS of carpet that was at some point wet for a very long time. The carpet is wall-to-wall and well worn, obviously installed during an optimistic interlude in the past when someone thought the hotel would be a success. Shag of a long-unfashionable length, dyed a color that has no counterpart in nature, it curls slightly at the corners as though something were trying to claw its way out.
If this is the last act of my life, Rafferty thinks, I’d rather it didn’t begin on a carpet like this one.
Kosit sits, legs dangling, on top of the cheap, chipped, four-drawer bureau in front of the mirror, and Arthit is up on one elbow on the bed nearer the door. The bag of money is at the foot of Arthit’s bed, tipped on one side to spill bundles of currency across the bedspread. Rafferty is standing inside the bathroom door, just to get off the carpet. The toilet is running behind him. It has been running since they got there.
Kosit’s patrolman accomplice, the man who stuck the gun in the back of Rafferty’s neck, has gone back to the station to dig out some pictures.
“I’m not a cop now,” Arthit says.
Arthit’s face is puffy and bloated, especially beneath the eyes. For the first time since Rafferty met him, his friend is unshaven, despite the new and unwrapped razor on the bureau where Kosit sits, and the stubble on his jaw is dusted with white. The hair on one side of his head sweeps forward, probably from having been slept on.
“Of course you are,” Kosit says. “We can straighten this out.”
Arthit waves the thought away. “If I want to.”
“Oh, that’s good,” Kosit says. “Let Thanom win. Give him what he wants. That’ll show him.”
“Of course you want to be a cop,” Rafferty says.
Arthit puts out a hand, palm down, and slowly pats the air. The meaning is clear: Back off. “Poke,” he says, “I know you’re trying to keep me focused on stuff.” He reaches out a white-stockinged foot and kicks the bag of money a few inches toward the end of the bed. “Make lists, do things, get even, clear everything up. Keep me busy, keep me from thinking too much. And I appreciate it. But you know what? Everybody, and especially you, is just going to have to leave me alone. I don’t need a tow boat. I’m going to work through this the way I have to, and I don’t need anyone dragging me along. For the first time in years, I’m not a cop. I can do it my way, not their way. I don’t have to-” He stops and looks down at the bed for a moment, then lifts his chin as though his neck were stiff. “I don’t have to worry about Noi now. And I’ll tell you something. I am going to be at Noi’s cremation in two days.” He holds up his first and second fingers, V style. “Two days. Monday afternoon. That means I need to get this straightened out by then, because if I don’t, I’m going to get arrested before I’m even inside the temple. And while I don’t particularly care whether I get arrested, I won’t allow it to happen at Noi’s cremation. Noi’s cremation is going to be the kind of ceremony she deserves.” He waits, holding Rafferty’s gaze.
Rafferty says, “All right.”
Arthit reaches into the pocket of his trousers and withdraws an envelope, crumpled from his movements. “Do you know what this is?”
“Noi’s letter?” Rafferty asks.
“Has it been opened?”
“Not that I can see.”
“And it won’t be,” Arthit says, “until her spirit has been sent on its way with the peace and dignity it deserves. I won’t know what my wife’s last words to me were, Poke, until we get through this. So forget about motivating me, or helping me work through issues, or finding closure, or whatever it is you think you can do for me. I’ll do what I have to do. I’ll do anything that’s necessary to let me read this letter.”
“Okay,” Rafferty says.
“And that means we’re partners,” Arthit says. “Your jam is my jam.” He folds the envelope once and puts it back into his pocket. “I’m not a cop for now, and I want revenge. I can bring you my skills, and Kosit’s, and you can bring us everything you’ve figured out. Between us we’re going to get you out from under, and we’re going to put Thanom away, since he’s involved in your situation. I’ve had to leave Noi’s family to handle the ceremonies. You think I’ll forgive that? I’m going to boil his balls, dip them in hot sauce, and feed them to him.”
“How?” Kosit asks.
“It’s obvious. We learn what’s up and we fix it. Just come all the way in here, Poke. Stop lurking in the fucking bathroom, sit on this awful bed, and tell us what you know.”
Rafferty comes out of the bathroom, pulling the door closed behind him so he doesn’t have to listen to the toilet running. He glances at the bedspread, which is shiny with dirt, before he takes a seat, inches from Arthit’s feet.
“At the beginning it was simple,” Rafferty says. “We started with two sides. One of them is Ton, and I don’t know for sure who the other one is yet, although I’ve got a theory.”
“Let’s hear it.” Arthit reaches over to the other bed and grabs the pillow. He puts it on top of the pillow he already has, and then he sits up with them behind his back.
“No. I’m not sure, and I don’t want to plant anything in your minds, yours and Kosit’s, yet. I could be wrong. Let’s see how things shape up as we start to screw with them.” He rubs his face with his good hand, realizing how tired he is. But at the same time, there’s a kernel of excitement deep in his chest: He’s part of a team now. “So we had two sides, both threatening my family, one side if I wrote a book and the other side if I didn’t. And then it gets more complicated. Ton’s side is connected to Thanom. And Pan is connected-was connected, might still be connected-with this crook Wichat, who’s selling the babies.”
“Was connected or is?” Arthit asks.
“I think we’ll know in a few hours. I put some bait in a box. If Wichat goes for it, we’ll know they’re still an item.”
“Okay,” Arthit says. “Tell me about that ridiculous bandage on your hand.”
“This is courtesy of what I think of as the other side, meaning not Ton’s guys. I thought it was Ton’s side at first, but it wasn’t. Is this complicated enough?”
“I have extensive training,” Arthit says. “Cosmic string theory is complicated. Imaginary numbers are complicated. This is just two bunches of thugs tussling over a blanket, and you’re unlucky enough to be the blanket. Does the hand hurt?”
“Yes.”
“Well, don’t let it slow you down.”
“That’s what I needed. Sympathy.”
“Tell me about the money,” Arthit says, touching the bag with his foot.
“It’s Ton’s. I thought I’d enjoy spending it to stick his finger in a socket. And I’m hoping we’re at a point where we might be able to do that.”
“Hoping,’” Kosit says. He reaches down and pulls out one of the drawers in the dresser and puts one foot up on it. “Might be’ at a point. This is all very reassuring.”
“Why?” Arthit says. “Why are they any more vulnerable now than they were before?”
“Because they know that things aren’t working. They thought they had me under control, but now they know they don’t. They thought Thanom could put you on ice, but he couldn’t. Wichat, who’s probably involved in this, is worried about some kid wandering around who could bust his baby racket open. Nobody knows where we are or what direction we might come from. This is the kind of situation that makes people improvise, makes them do stupid things to get the world under control again.”
“But what was the point in the first place?” Kosit asks. “I mean, what were they all after?”
“Arthit called it,” Rafferty says. “It’s politics. Ton’s side, which is the elite who would hate to see Pan elected, aimed me at people who don’t like him. The kind of people who might spill the dirt if there were dirt to be spilled. We know-lots of people know-that there’s dirt back there, but I think there’s one thing, one horrific thing, people don’t know about, except as a rumor of some kind, and they wanted to see whether I could find it, so they could use it against him if he decides to run for office. The other side, call it the pro-Pan side, tried to scare me off because they were afraid I’d find the dirt, and they don’t want anything to surface that could keep him from getting elected. Whatever it is, Pan has managed to keep it a secret till now, and that’s why none of those biographies got written: He bought people off, or threatened them, or burned down a printing press.”
Arthit says, “Any idea what it is?”
“I’m pretty sure it’s exactly what we talked about the very first night, after the card game. It’s the missing step from ambitious thug to budding billionaire. At some point Pan acquired a guardian angel, and he did it by doing something unforgivable, something indelible. Something that could destroy Pan, and probably the guardian angel, too, if it came out. And I think it had to do with a fire. He was burned a few months before he made the leap. I located half a dozen fires in that time frame, but I think the one we want is a toy factory.”
“I remember that,” Kosit says. “It was awful.”
Arthit says, “Have you not listened to the radio today?”
“Actually, Arthit,” Poke says, “that was high up on my to-do list, but I haven’t gotten around-”
“Then you don’t know,” Arthit says. “This is no longer a hypothetical discussion.” He sits up and leans forward, grunting as he stretches his lower back. “I sat here, in this awful room, with nothing to do, and in self-defense I turned on the radio. Big story. Pan’s office announced today that he’s going to hold a press conference on Monday. The spokesman wouldn’t say what it was about, but all the radio commentators seem to think he’s going to announce that he’s running for office.”
“Monday,” Rafferty says.
“Day after tomorrow.” Arthit draws a deep, slow breath and blows it out. “The day of Noi’s cremation.”
“Well, then,” Rafferty says. “We’d better get going.”
“Finally,” Arthit says. “Where?”
“First,” Rafferty says, “we’re going to a camera store to spend some of Ton’s money. Then we’ll go down to the Indian district and spend some more of it to buy stolen goods. Third, we’ll go see some street kids, and after that we’ll pay a compassionate visit to someone in the hospital.”
“Compassion,” Arthit says. “One of my favorite words.”
They haven’t been out of the taxi more than a minute when Rafferty sees the first one, but only because he’s looking. The kid is about nine years old, dirty enough to have spent most of his life underground, and he’s lurking on the other side of a line of parked cars, watching them through the windows.
Rafferty says, “See him?”
Kosit, who is toting a big shopping bag, says, “See who?”
“Exactly,” Rafferty says. “Nobody sees them.” He turns to the kid and waves him over, but the boy squints at Kosit’s uniform and takes off at a run, and then two others appear, both girls, visible but just out of reach, dangle themselves in sight for a second, and sprint in different directions. It’s the same maneuver they did when they stole the wallet from the man who’d been following Rafferty.
“The old skyrocket,” Arthit says approvingly. “Everybody goes in different directions, and the fastest kid runs last.” One of the girls, thin as a piece of paper, with an explosion of fine hair framing a nervous, high-boned face, has slowed and is watching them over her shoulder. “That one,” Arthit says. “Nobody’s going to catch her.” He takes a couple of steps in her direction, and she accelerates like a startled hare, threading her way between the cars on the road and disappearing around a corner. “Olympic caliber,” Arthit says, coming back.
“It’s down there somewhere,” Rafferty says, thumbing over his shoulder at the Chao Phraya. All three kids had put the river behind them when they ran.
“Sure it is,” Arthit says. “If they run east, home is west.”
“Boo says it’s a shack, nothing but weeds and mud on either side of it. Just old wood with a tin roof. Right along here somewhere.”
They walk the cracked, weedy sidewalk that runs along the top of the riverbank. Across the river the city’s lights are beginning to flicker on, casting long yellow threads over the surface of the water. The sky is deep blue-black above them, reddening to an eggplant purple at the horizon. The river exudes a dark, sweet brackish smell.
Two more kids approach them from the front, and Rafferty turns to see the other three coming up from behind. They all look wary. “Put your hands on your wallets,” he says. “They’re artists with wallets.” To the speedy girl, who has come closest, he calls, “Where’s Boo?”
“Don’t know Boo,” the girl says, slowing. Her eyes are on Kosit, and she’s ready to run again.
“Oh, sure you do. Look at me. I was the guy in the garage this morning when you helped my wife and kid get away. On Soi-”
“Soi Pipat,” she says, and she gives him a big grin. “We were good, huh?”
“Amazing.”
Arthit says, “You can really run.”
The girl says, “Sometimes I need to.” She looks back at Rafferty, then over at Kosit, with a passing glance at Arthit. “You didn’t have cops with you this morning.”
“They’re okay,” Rafferty says. “Boo knows this one.” He angles a thumb at Arthit.
The girl grabs her lower lip between her teeth. Then she swipes her nose with an index finger and says, “They’re down there. Near the water. You want to see them?”
“Sure. But I need to talk to Boo, too.”
“Then we have to hurry,” the girl says. She gives Kosit another critical glance. “You’re sure about the cops?”
“Look at the bag, the one in uniform’s carrying,” Rafferty says. “He’s Santa Claus. Why do we have to hurry?”
She turns toward the path and says over her shoulder, “Because we’re going to work soon.”
“Actually,” Rafferty says, “you’re not.”
IT’S TWENTY THOUSAND baht,” Rafferty says, passing the fold of currency to Boo. “It’s to keep the kids from going to work, pay for food and stuff, and buy a little of their time.”
“For twenty thousand you can have them for a week,” Boo says, fanning the bills. The only light in the room is a yellowish glow from four kerosene lanterns, one placed in each corner, a cautious distance from the wooden walls. The flames throw golden highlights on sweaty foreheads and noses. “What do you want them to do?”
“Hang around on the street. Be invisible. Stay out of reach.” Rafferty has one arm around Miaow, who is not only sitting closer to him than usual but actually leaning against him. Her knees are raised, and she has both arms wrapped around them, folding herself into the smallest space possible. She hasn’t said a word. Rose sits several feet away, watching them both. Da is clear across the room, as far from them as possible, with Peep out cold in her lap.
“Out of whose reach?” Boo asks.
“Everybody’s. Send them in threes, so they can do the…the…”
“Skyrocket,” Arthit says.
“I remember you from before,” Boo says to Arthit. “You were at Poke’s. Aren’t you a cop anymore?”
“I’m on leave.”
“Cops are always cops.”
“Speaking of cops,” Rafferty says, “this is Kosit. Kosit has some toys.”
“I’m Officer Santa Claus,” Kosit says. “Is there something I can put on the ground? I don’t want this stuff to get dirt in it.”
“Here,” Rose says. “Real cashmere.” She takes the shawl, folded in half, off her lap and spreads it on the dirt floor. Rafferty starts to protest, but it doesn’t seem worth it.
“Get two of those lanterns,” Boo says to the room at large, and immediately two of the smaller kids jump up and thread their way through the seated children, lanterns in hand. Boo takes them and sets them on either side of the cashmere shawl.
“Here goes,” Kosit says, clearly enjoying himself. He reaches into the bag and brings out several black objects, then dips back in and gets more. When he’s finished, there are eight of them, sleek and compact, made of gleaming plastic and shaped like cylinders, small enough to fit easily into a child’s hand. “Look,” Kosit says. He picks one up, unfolds a small screen on one side, holds the cylinder up, and moves the barrel slowly across the room. Then he turns it around and pushes a button, and suddenly kids are scrambling over one another to get closer, to see their own lantern-lighted faces on the tiny video screen. “You’re all in the movies,” Kosit says.
“You think everybody can use these?” Rafferty asks.
“Are you serious?” Boo says. “They’re kids. Kids can figure this stuff out while they’re sleeping. You’re the guys who read the directions.”
“They need to keep them out of sight,” Rafferty says. “Under their shirts or something, until they absolutely have to pull them out. And the people they’re photographing can’t see them.” He picks one up. “Watch. The screen swivels up, so you can look down at it. Hold the camera at chest or even belt level, just don’t bring it up to the eye. Anything held up to the eye is a dead bust.”
“Anything else?” Boo says. “I mean, anything we can’t work out ourselves?”
“Yes. I’m deadly serious about them staying out of reach. If anyone even looks at you, beat it. Walk away. If they come after you, run. But these things have a zoom lens, so don’t get close. Is that understood? Because if it isn’t, we can forget it right now.”
“Relax,” Boo says. “This isn’t as dangerous as what they do every night. Sooner or later one of the pedos is going to grab a kid and hold him hostage while he tries to talk his way through the cops.”
At the word “pedos,” Arthit and Kosit both look up at Boo. Before they can ask a question, though, Rafferty says, “But I’m not responsible for that. They’re not doing that for me. They’re doing this for me, and they’ll be careful, all right?”
“Pedos’?” Kosit demands, his eyes narrow.
“I’ll tell you later,” Rafferty says.
Boo says, “Who are we watching?”
“A bunch of guys,” Rafferty says. “You’ve met Pan and Dr. Ravi, so you should be on the team at Pan’s place, but stay out of sight. Officer Kosit has pictures of most of the others.”
“They just brought me along to carry stuff,” Kosit says. He reaches back into the bag and takes out a manila envelope. From the envelope he withdraws several black-and-white photographs, pulled from police files by the patrolman who helped him arrest Rafferty. He puts the first one on the shawl.
“Wichat,” Boo says sourly, looking down. “Some of us already know him by sight.”
“I do,” says the girl with the exploding hair.
“Okay,” Boo says, “you and two others will be on Sathorn.” To Kosit he says, “Who else?”
“A cop,” Kosit says, putting a photo of Thanom on the shawl. “This is someone to be very careful of.”
“Looks like a monkey,” Boo says.
“He is a monkey,” Arthit says. “He’s the world’s only man-eating monkey.”
“And there’s also a rich guy,” Rafferty says. Ton looks up, startled by the camera, in one of the photos taken at the malaria event. Captain Teeth glowers over Ton’s shoulder “The guy just behind him is not anyone to get close to.”
Rafferty spreads the pictures out. “There’s one more,” he says. “But we haven’t got a photo. He’ll probably be with these two, or with the one with the bad teeth, there, in the picture. You’ll pick them all up at the house where the rich guy, whose name is Ton, lives, or maybe at his office.”
“You have addresses?” Boo is examining the photos one at a time.
“Sure,” Rafferty says.
“And what you want…” Boo says.
“I want everything they do, wherever they go. And I’ll say it one more time: I want the kids to stay as far away as possible. I’d rather have bad pictures, or no pictures, than to have a kid get caught. Teams of no fewer than three, so they divide up if they get chased.”
“Phones,” Kosit prompts.
“Right. Here’s how you talk to me, and to each other, if anything happens.”
Kosit upends the bag, and a dozen cell phones, all makes and several colors, cascade out. “Stolen and resold,” Kosit says. “Although as a cop I’d never say that. The SIM cards are all new, bought for cash. Prepaid up to five thousand baht each. No records, nothing that can be traced.”
“And one each for you and Rose,” Rafferty says to Miaow, picking up two of them. “Get out your old ones.”
Not speaking, Miaow shifts her weight so she can reach into her pocket. She comes up with her phone, holding it without looking at anyone. She seems to be staring through the nearest wall and all the way across the river. When Miaow moves, Da’s eyes go to her. Rafferty takes the phone and hands it to Rose, who’s holding her own.
“Throw them in the river,” he says.
Rose nods, but for the moment she puts them on the dirt floor.
“Are we clear on all this?” Rafferty asks Boo.
Boo puts down the photos and picks up one of the phones. “Starting when?”
“Right now. I’ll give everybody money for moto-taxis. Just wave the bills at them. And listen, if anybody gets something out of the ordinary-for example, if any of these people meet each other-I want a phone call the moment you’ve got your video and you’re out of sight.” He gets up, dusting his jeans, and Arthit and Kosit follow suit. “I’m going to say it again, and I’m talking to every single one of you. If you’re in any kind of danger, forget the video. Just run.”
“We already know about running,” says the girl with the exploding hair.
“Good,” Rafferty says. “Let’s get started.”
“SHE NEEDS TO work it out for herself,” Rose says.
“She and Arthit,” Rafferty says. “Nobody needs my help.” They have their arms comfortably dangling from each other’s waists, and they stand only a few feet from the edge of the water, now just a black, flat, featureless plain with an upside-down city glittering near the opposite shore.
“Don’t be silly,” Rose says. She turns and lightly kisses the side of his neck. “You help just by being there.”
He leans toward her, forcing her to prolong the kiss. “That’s not enough.”
“She can’t confide in you,” Rose says. “She doesn’t know what’s wrong. All she knows is that she doesn’t fit anywhere. Not at school, not with the kind of kids who used to be her friends. She’s somewhere between here and there, and no one in either place really accepts her.”
“We accept her.”
“Come on. We’re wallpaper. In a kid’s life, the only people who really exist are other kids. Parents are like large, troublesome stuffed animals.”
“So what you’re telling me, in your tactful Thai way,” Rafferty says, turning to face her and cupping her chin in one hand, “is that I should keep my mouth shut.”
“Until she asks you,” Rose says. “Which she probably won’t.” She looks up at him for a moment, and then she says, “I never tell you how handsome you are.”
“And I know why.”
“Don’t even try that,” she says. “You know perfectly well how women look at you.”
“They sense solidity,” Rafferty says. “They know I’ll keep a fire burning in the mouth of the cave and that there will always be a haunch to gnaw on. Even if I put them in danger all the time. Rose, I’m so sorry about-”
“What they know,” Rose interrupts, “is that you’d give them a great time if you decided to pile on.”
Rafferty says, “Pile on?”
Rose leans forward and brushes his lips with hers. “Go away,” she says. “Do what you and Arthit have to do. Be careful. Watch out for Arthit. I don’t know how much he wants to stay alive. And don’t worry about Miaow. She’s tougher than you are.”
Rafferty says, “Pretty much everyone is.” He starts to climb up the bank but turns back and says, “Get rid of those phones.”
They don’t know where he is,” Captain Teeth says, putting down the phone and following Ton with his eyes. “He’s out with the wife somewhere.”
Ton is agitated in a way that unnerves Ren. The man paces the room, running his fingertips over the surfaces of the furniture as though expecting dust. He straightens everything he touches: photos, pens, ashtrays, knickknacks, but he never looks down at the result. He continually tugs at the sleeves of his jacket, as though they’re riding up on him. He buttons and unbuttons his sport coat. He hasn’t sat down in the twenty minutes since he burst into the room, swearing about Pan.
“Call back whoever you talked to,” Ton says. “Tell him if he can’t find his boss and put me in touch with him in half an hour, it’ll be years before he gets another job. I need the woman’s phone located, and that man’s boss is the only one who can authorize it.”
“Fine,” Captain Teeth says, dialing. He turns his back to Ton and, looking at Ren, rolls his eyes.
“Pan’s going to make an announcement,” Ton says. “He’s going…to make…an announcement. After everything we’ve learned from this…this fishing expedition with Rafferty, he’s going to make an announcement? You,” he says to Ren, “get on the phone and-” He is still for the first time since he came through the door. “No,” he says. “Forget it. I’ll be back in a minute.”
Ton goes through the door and into a long, dim hallway, paneled in reflective mahogany. The only lights gleam above paintings: a darkly polished Vuillard, two gauzy Renoirs, a pallid, drooping Madonna by the Dutch Vermeer forger of the 1930s, Han van Meegeren. Three doors down, he pushes his way into a room that’s empty except for some bare bookshelves, a grand piano, and a cello, leaning carelessly against a chair. On one of the bookshelves near the door is a telephone.
Ton picks it up, dials a number from memory, and says, “General? I’m sorry to bother you, but I think we should talk.” He listens for a second. “No, sir, I don’t think it’s anything fatal. But if you could give me a few minutes-Fine. I’ll wait for your call.” He hangs up and blots the bead of perspiration that’s gliding down toward his jawline.
THE NURSE’S CREPE-SOLED shoes squeak on the linoleum as she hurries after them. “Please, please,” she says. It’s an urgent whisper. “You can’t go in there. He’s not allowed to have visitors right now.”
Kosit speaks in his normal tone of voice, without looking back. “Did you see my uniform when we passed you?”
“Of course,” she hisses. “But still, the doctor says-”
“Tell the doctor to say it to me,” Kosit says. He pushes open the door to the patient’s room. “Now go away. We’re not going to interfere with your curing him.”
The nurse says, “There’s no curing him.”
“Then what are you worried about?” Kosit stands aside and lets Rafferty and Arthit precede him. Then he follows and closes the door in the nurse’s face. He turns his back to it and leans against it, his arms crossed.
The room is as dim and airless as a sealed cave. The flame on a candle, Rafferty thinks, would burn straight up, without a flicker. Porthip has been assigned to a high floor, with a view of Bangkok in all its sloppy, energetic life, a decision that seems to Rafferty to be tactless. Through the gauze-curtained window, arteries of light mark the progress of traffic down Sukhumvit, and neon smears the darkness with the vibrant colors of the city’s nightlife. By contrast, the single light hanging above the bed is a chalky bluish white, turning the face above the tugged-up covers into a pallid waxwork.
Porthip is flat on his back. His eyes are closed. The fat around his eyes has been burned away, and the eyeballs beneath the lids seem unusually large, as spherical as marbles. Suspended halfway down the intravenous drip that snakes under the covers to attach to the man’s wrist is a morphine-delivery unit with a plunger the patient can use when the pain is too much to bear. Beside the bed, green screens monitor the struggles of the heart that gave out yesterday, abandoning the depleted body to the cancer that is devouring it. As he approaches the bed, Rafferty studies the face. Stripped of the energy that had animated it, it seems a frail mask, bones hollowed out to create a thin shell over emptiness. Rafferty feels a cold prickling between his shoulder blades, seeing his own face in forty or fifty years.
Porthip’s eyelids flicker.
Rafferty says, “You’re awake.”
The eyes open, focused somewhere beyond Rafferty. With evident effort, Porthip brings them to Rafferty’s face. His forehead creases for a second and then clears. “You,” he says. “I wondered.”
“Wondered what?”
“How long,” Porthip says. “Before you…” He lifts his chin, indicating the morphine drip. “Push that thing, would you?”
“Sure.” Rafferty depresses the plunger, and a moment later Porthip’s eyes slowly close and then reopen.
“Nothing,” he says. His voice is a husk, just a rough surface wrapped around breath. “I’ve pushed it too often. The limiter’s kicked in. But when it works, it’s great stuff. I’ve…seen things. On the walls. On the insides of my eyelids.” His back arches as a spasm runs through him. His eyes close. “Death,” he says.
Rafferty says, “So what?”
“Ah,” Porthip says, opening his eyes. “You’re angry.”
“You lied to me.”
Porthip says, “Why should you be different?”
“You’re dying. Why waste the effort now? What possible difference could it make to you at this point?”
“Habits,” Porthip says. “Hard to break.”
“Snakeskin,” Rafferty says. “It owned the factory that burned down. And you owned Snakeskin. With Tatsuya.”
“Tatsuya,” Porthip says, and this time he does smile. “The partner every businessman dreams of. Dead for years and years. Tatsuya is a signature machine back in Tokyo.”
“I don’t care about Tatsuya. You owned that factory.”
“Not according to the records,” Porthip says.
“No, of course not. But if you didn’t own it when it burned, then you did something that doesn’t make any business sense at all. You, as Snakeskin, bought a destroyed factory, paid good money for it, and then just let it sit there. You didn’t clean it up, you didn’t put it to use. It could be making money again. So why buy it if you weren’t going to do any of that?”
“Interesting question,” Porthip says.
“I don’t think you did buy it. I think you already owned it. You just quietly sold it to yourself, passed it from one company to another. You couldn’t sell it to someone else because it might have attracted media attention. The papers would have been interested. A lot of people died there.”
“One hundred,” Porthip says, and takes a breath. “And twenty-one.”
“And around the time of the fire, Pan disappears, and when he comes back, he’s got burns all over him and there’s suddenly some serious weight behind him. He’s doing big-boy business, the kind of business that requires someone to open doors. Someone like you.”
“You know,” Porthip says, “you can push the plunger on that thing up there until your thumb falls off, but it only delivers so much. They let you control your pain, but only up to a point. There’s a limiter that won’t let you go all the way to where I want to go. For that you need a doctor who’s so high up nobody would ever question him.”
“You owned that factory,” Rafferty says. “Pan got burned there, somehow, and you wound up owing him. And you’re high enough up that no one would, as you say, question you.”
Porthip’s body goes rigid, and his mouth tightens into a line as straight as a slice. Then his lips part and he lets out a long sound that’s just his breath traveling over his vocal cords, wind through a pipe organ.
“Pan put the locks on,” Porthip says when he can talk. His voice is frayed and ragged, and he’s taking more frequent breaths. “He put the bars on the windows. We had a…a problem with the ghost shift. Day jobs, some of them had day jobs. They were tired. People kept going outside, going into the sheds where the stuffing was stored. Big…soft piles of stuffing. For the bunnies, for the kittens. The ghost shift…they took naps there.” He struggles under the covers until he has an arm free, and then he lifts a twig-thin hand to the plunger and pushes it home. “Nothing.” He is panting with the effort. “But I can pretend I feel better.”
“They took naps,” Rafferty prompts.
“I hired Pan from Chai, who was the top crook then. I needed four or five heavyweights to keep the workers on the ball. Except for Chai, Pan was the only one who knew who I was, the only one-” His body arches again, his eyes slam shut, and a stream of air hisses between his lips. “He was the only one who knew anything. The others were just…muscle.”
“What happened?”
“There was…a rule,” Porthip says. “There had to be two guards outside. One of them had to have the key. One of them always…always had to have the key.” His eyes close again, and the lids flutter as though the eyeballs behind them are rolling up. Rafferty puts a hand on the arm Porthip extricated from the covers. The man’s eyes open. “Key,” he repeats.
He turns his head to the right, as though it eases the pain. “So Pan stops by the place in the middle of the night. He used to do that, just to…to keep everybody awake. And there’s smoke coming out of the windows, and people inside are screaming. He runs around the building, looking for the men who were supposed to…to be there…but they’ve gone…to…to eat. They’ve got the key. Pan went crazy. He tried to knock down the doors. They were iron, hot iron, and he was trying to push them open. He tried to pull the bars off the windows, even though flames were already coming out of them. He reached between the bars, into the fire. He tried to pull people through. He actually pulled one set of bars out and yanked three people through the window, but they were dead. They were on fire, but he pulled them over the windowsill and fell backward. They landed on top of him, burning. He rolled out from under them and tried to go in through the window, but he couldn’t. It was an inferno.” Porthip licks his lips. “Can I have some water?”
Rafferty picks up the glass with the straw in it and positions it under Porthip’s mouth, then waits as the man drinks.
“He was burned. Badly. His clothes were synthetics. They melted into his skin. He was in terrible pain. But when the guards came back, he killed them. Then he loaded them in the trunk of his car and dumped them in the river. At five A.M. he came to my house. He could barely stand up.”
“And you took care of him.”
“He almost died there. He tried to save those people. Never, not once, did he do anything that would have…exposed me. He was the kind of man you wanted to do something for.”
Arthit says, “But you’re exposing him now, aren’t you?”
Porthip looks past Rafferty and lets his eyes settle on Arthit. “He’s not the same man. Before, he had…he had honor.”
“What does that mean?” Rafferty asks.
“You’re doing so well,” Porthip says. “I’d hate…hate to deprive you of the satisfaction.”
“You backed him. You put him into businesses he never could have gotten into on his own.”
“At first,” Porthip says. “For a while.”
“And then you sold the factory to him.”
“No,” Porthip says. “You’re missing it.”
“Missing what?”
“Snakeskin. Snakeskin sold the factory to Pan.”
Rafferty says, “I just said that.”
Porthip shakes his head. “You said I sold it to him.”
From behind Rafferty, Arthit says, “It’s a corporation, Poke. It’s not an individual. It remains Snakeskin no matter who owns it.”
“Oh, Jesus,” Rafferty says. “You sold the company.”
Kosit closes his eyes and nods.
“To whom?”
Porthip’s lids open, and he looks at Rafferty out of the corners of his eyes. He lifts his hand toward the morphine-delivery unit and caresses the plunger with his fingertips, then lets the hand drop. “You don’t know?” he asks. “You haven’t figured it out?”
Rafferty tilts his head back and closes his eyes and lets the realization wash over him. When he opens them again, he finds Porthip looking at him with some of the old energy.
“Ton,” Rafferty says. “You sold it to Ton. And Ton gave the factory to Pan.”
“See?” Porthip says. “You’re not hopeless after all.”
They haven’t even gotten into the hospital’s parking lot when Rafferty’s phone rings.
“Wichat came out of his office,” says a child’s voice. “With three big guys.”
“Who is this?”
“Nit,” says the child. “I’m the girl who runs fast.”
“Good work, Nit. Stay away from him. Be careful.”
“I’m always careful.”
“Has he met anybody?”
“No, but he went to your apartment building, where we were this morning. He’s in there now.”
Rafferty’s heart sinks. He’d been pretty sure it would happen, but he hadn’t wanted to believe it. He puts out a hand to stop Arthit and Kosit. “Where are you?”
“In front of the building. Across the street.”
“You know the garage door, where you went in before?”
“Sure.”
“Okay. Stay across the street but move left, so the garage door is to your right. Keep moving until you’re looking at the left edge of the building. You should be able to see the balconies that stick out on that side.”
“Hang on. Yeah, sure. I can see them.”
“Okay. Count up eight stories. Tell me whether you see any lights in the windows next to that balcony.”
“…six…seven…No. It’s dark.”
“Okay, now count down four floors. Wait. Is someone keeping an eye on the entrance, in case they come out?”
“Sure.” The tone is edged with impatience.
“There’s no balcony on the fourth floor, but there are windows in the same-”
“Got it. Yeah, there are lights on.”
“Son of a bitch,” Rafferty says in English. “Okay, thanks,” he says in Thai to the girl. “Get out of sight. The people Wichat wants aren’t there, and he’ll be out any minute. Wait around the corner on-”
“On Silom,” Nit says, and this time the impatience isn’t just at the edges.
“Right.” He snaps the phone closed and pops a sweat that’s pure anger.
“Well,” he says to Arthit, “we’ve got the answer to one question. Pan and Wichat still keep the chat line open.”
“On what evidence?”
“Pan just tried to sell Boo and Da to Wichat. I told Pan they were staying on the fourth floor of my apartment house. I didn’t tell anybody except Pan. And Wichat’s up there right now with some goons, probably punching holes in the walls.”
“What does that prove?” Arthit asks. “In the larger picture, I mean.”
“Well, I think we can assume that Pan is no longer the self-appointed guardian of the poor of Isaan. If he ever was. Da’s about as poor and as Isaan as it’s possible to be, and he tried to hand her to a Bangkok crook who probably wants her dead.” He kicks a tire on the nearest car, hard enough to set off a whooping alarm. “This is going to kill Rose. She thinks he’s a great man.”
Arthit says, “And then there’s Ton.” He grabs Rafferty’s arm and hauls him away from the squalling car.
“Yes,” Rafferty says. He can’t get a breath that’s deep enough to unlock his chest. “There’s Ton.”
“What do you think that’s about?” Kosit asks.
Rafferty says, “The word that comes to mind is ‘sellout.”
“EVERYBODY ELSE IS staying put,” Rafferty says, putting the phone away. “The kids say nobody’s moving.” The three of them are sitting on plastic chairs at an outdoor noodle stall off Sukhumvit. Kosit is slurping rice noodles loudly enough to be heard over the traffic, while Arthit pushes his spoon through the broth as though he expects to discover something of value at the bottom of the bowl. Occasionally he stops shoving the utensil around and passes his hand over the bristle on his chin. All the while his eyes burn a hole in the center of the bowl.
Rafferty watches Arthit brood, thinks of three or four modestly helpful things to say, and rejects all of them. Instead he takes a mouthful of noodles and boils his tongue. He forces the scalding liquid down and grabs a glass of water, holding the coolness in his mouth on the theory that it will keep his tongue rare, as opposed to well done. He lets the silence stretch and then swallows the water and says, “It’s the only thing that makes any sense.”
Without looking up, Arthit says, “What is?”
“A deal. A terrifically secret deal. Between Ton-Mr. Establishment-and Pan. Ton must have taken a look at him and seen a guy who had peasant roots and lots of charisma, was terrifically popular, and was an obvious candidate sooner or later. The worst-case scenario would have been that Pan runs and gets elected, and Ton’s guys have got to get him out somehow. The best-case scenario would have been that he runs and gets elected-”
“And they own him,” Arthit says. He drops the spoon into the bowl. “Ton’s group aren’t against Pan running for office. They’re for it. Because they made a deal with him. They think they’re going to control the first Isaan prime minister.”
“Why would he go for it?” Kosit asks with his mouth full. “He could get elected without them.”
“I’ll make a few guesses,” Arthit says. “They tell him he won’t get assassinated during the campaign, for one thing. They say he won’t have to worry about a coup if he gets elected and that they can make everything a lot easier for him once he’s in office. Cooperation from the legislature. No pesky investigation every time he slips a million baht into his pocket.”
Rafferty says, “And I was, to use a business term, due diligence. They set me up to see whether the man could really get elected.”
“Meaning what?” Kosit says.
Rafferty takes another mouthful of water. “Ton wanted to know whether I could discover the monstrosity in Pan’s past, the thing that would make it impossible for him to get elected. I think they saw the same blank space Arthit talked about at the very beginning, the link missing in Pan’s story, the link between Pan the pimp and Pan the great industrialist. They wanted to see whether I could find out what it was. If Pan runs for national office, how likely is it that the fire at the factory will come out? If it did, it’d be fatal. People will put up with a lot from a candidate, as American politics prove over and over again, but it’s hard to put a positive spin on mass murder. Ton figures only a very small number of people know about it, and they’re all on his side. So he set me loose to see whether I’d find it. He gave me clues, put me in touch with some of the right people, because after Pan goes public as a candidate, he’ll be investigated by the best, and they won’t miss anything obvious. I was his way of knowing whether the campaign could survive the attention of the press.”
“And he doesn’t know you’ve figured it out,” Kosit says. “That’s why the announcement on Monday.”
“I don’t actually understand that,” Rafferty says.
Arthit pushes his chair back and says, “Neither do I.”
Kosit picks up his bowl in both hands and drains the broth without apparent injury. “Why not?”
“Because I’m on the loose,” Rafferty says. “Because Arthit’s on the loose. Because there’s no way he can know what we’ve learned or what we’re up to, so why not just wait until we’re under control? What’s so special about Monday? They could announce any time in the next few weeks, but no, it’s Monday, and here we are rattling around all over Bangkok, and Ton has no idea what we do or don’t know. It’s not…characteristic. He’s careful, and here he is allowing Pan to go public while these wild cards are all over the table.”
Arthit says, “Maybe Ton’s not in charge.”
Rafferty is about to fill his mouth with water again, but he puts the glass back down. “Right. What’s happening right now? Porthip’s dying. Porthip might be the only person who actually knows firsthand what happened at the factory. Everybody else just has hearsay.” A thought strikes him. “Except maybe Wichat. Wichat was working for the same crook Pan was, back when it happened. Maybe that’s why Pan tried to hand him the kids, because he can’t piss Wichat off.”
“Could be,” Arthit says, nodding. “Keep going.”
“So with Porthip about to vanish from the scene, Pan wants to redefine the relationship. He tells Ton he’s going to announce-”
“And Ton says no,” Arthit says. “And Pan doesn’t like to be told no. So let’s say he decides to announce anyway. The announcement is a demonstration that he’s going to be more independent now, that it’s going to be a collaboration or nothing.”
Rafferty says, “Works for me.”
“One thing I can tell you,” Arthit says. “This is bigger than Ton. He’s rich and nice-looking and he married well, but he’s not in charge of anything this big. There’s someone else, someone up in the nosebleed echelons of society. Military or conservative for a dozen generations. And what that means…” He looks at Kosit, who’s been shifting eagerly on his chair, practically raising his hand to speak. “What does that mean?”
“That Ton’s on the spot,” Kosit says. “He’s sitting on a burner.”
For the first time, Arthit looks like himself. He leans over and swats Kosit lightly on the head. “That’s exactly right.”
Rafferty says, “Hold on,” and opens his phone. “What?”
“Pan and the little guy,” Boo says on the other end of the line. “Dr. something, the one with the big nose and the slacks with all those pleats?”
“Another player on the move,” Rafferty says to Arthit. To Boo he says, “What are they doing?”
“They pulled out of Pan’s right after I talked to you, about ten minutes ago. Big black car, not the gold one. They’re heading away from town, on some nowhere road.”
“What direction? Where are you?”
“North, sort of. Out toward Chatuchak. Bunch of factories.”
Rafferty says, “Factories.”
“The guy with the nose is driving,” Boo says. “Pan’s in the back.”
“How far behind are you?”
“A few blocks. We’re on three motos, no lights. You’re going to have to pay these guys extra for that.”
“Who’s ‘we’?” Rafferty realizes he’s standing, and a sudden stab of pain tells him that he’s tried to reach into his trouser pocket with the bandaged hand, looking for small bills to pay for their meal. Kosit gets up and drops a few fifty-baht notes on the table.
“Just kids,” Boo says.
“Which kids?”
“Nobody you know.”
Something in his tone rings wrong, but Rafferty dismisses it, since there’s nothing he can do about it anyway. “Stay far back. I’m pretty sure we know where he’s going. We’re way the hell on the other side of town, but we’ll be there as soon as we can. And listen to me. When they stop, you call to tell us where it is. And that’s it. You do not go in until we get there. Not you, not any of your kids. You wait outside and out of sight until we arrive.”
“You worry too much,” Boo says. He disconnects.
“I worry too much,” Rafferty says to no one.
“We’ll be where?” Arthit asks. Kosit is already out on the street, hailing a cab.
“The famous factory. Dr. Ravi’s taking Pan out there as we speak.” A taxi flashes its headlights and cuts through traffic at an acute angle to reach them. “And I think the time has come to get their attention.” Rafferty climbs into the back, beside Arthit, as Kosit slips into the front seat and pushes his badge at the startled driver.
“Right now,” Kosit says, “it is impossible for you to drive too fast.”
Boo waves the motorcycle taxis past the gate that Dr. Ravi’s car pulled through. The gate is high and rusted, twisted as though someone drove straight through it, and it sags disconsolately to the right, like it’s hoping for something to lean on. There are no lights visible on the other side, just tall, spiky weeds and the looming hulk of a building.
Not until the bikes are almost a quarter of a mile down the road, with the gate behind them, does Boo wave the convoy to a stop. The road is just heavily oiled dirt, spotted with patches of asphalt to fill in holes. On either side, vertical screens of foliage climb chain-link fences to mask the squat industrial buildings they surround. Razor wire spirals its silver teeth along the tops of some of the fences. Except for a weak wash of moonlight diffused through ragged, gauzy clouds and a single spotlight shining uselessly on an empty parking lot across the street, the area is dark. Two feral-looking older boys climb off the bike behind Boo’s, but when the person on the third bike begins to dismount, Boo waves her to stay put.
“You’re going back to the shack,” he says.
“No, I’m not,” Da says. “I’m going where you go.” She has made a sling of Rose’s cashmere shawl, and Peep peers over the edge of it, curious now that the movement of the motorbike has stopped.
“This isn’t the same as watching a house,” Boo says. “We don’t even know what’s in there.”
“You should have said that before we all got on the bikes,” Da says. “And there are four of us, and Khun Poke is bringing all his police, right?”
“You’re not coming.”
“You don’t understand, do you?” She looks at him as though he’s slow and she’s grown impatient with waiting for the idea to drop. “I’m going where you’re going.” She steps toward him, and he backs up. “What’s your problem? I’m a girl?”
Boo licks his lips, looks away, and then his eyes come back to her and he says, “The baby.” The boys are watching, and to Boo’s irritation they look amused.
“Peep?” Da says, her eyes wide and innocent. She puts a hand, open-fingered, against her heart. “Peep, in danger? Peep’s been in danger ever since he got stolen. He’s used to it. If he wasn’t in danger, he’d probably start to cry. His karma has kept him safe until now, and either it’ll keep him safe tonight or it won’t. Just like yours. He’ll be fine or not. Just like you.”
One of the boys laughs, and Boo rounds on him, fists clenched.
“See?” Da says. “Even your friends aren’t afraid of you. I’m not letting you go in there without me.”
The night’s silence breaks open as something mechanical sputters, coughs, and gradually works its way up to an irregular chug. A motor of some kind. The half-moon emerges from behind a scrap of cloud to reveal an area that looks post-human. The world is a narrow oiled road, fences, weeds, and empty black buildings like giant boxes dropped to earth at random.
“Generator,” says one of the boys. “Must be back there.”
Boo has wheeled around to face the sound. While his back is turned, Da hops off the bike and taps the driver on the shoulder. He glances at her, takes the money in her hand, and pops the clutch. By the time Boo’s head snaps around, the bike is ten meters away, accelerating into the night.
Boo glares at Da. Da reaches into the shawl, brings up Peep’s hand, and waves it from side to side at Boo. The other boys start to laugh, then cover their mouths to muffle the sound. Da is grinning, too, but Boo’s lips are a tight line. He stands perfectly still, waiting for silence.
“We’re doing this my way, and anybody who thinks I don’t mean that can find a new bunch of friends and a new way to buy food tomorrow.” His voice is a sharp-edged whisper. “Everybody understand that?” He looks at Da. “Everybody?”
Nods all around. The boys study their feet. Da busies herself with Peep, but she makes a syllable of assent.
“I’m going through the gate first. You all”-he focuses on Da again-“all of you, you wait until I wave you in. Once we’re all in, you do what I say unless I’m dead, and then it’s up to you. Anything there you don’t understand?”
“Yes,” Da says, for all of them. “You’re not supposed to go in. Rafferty said we were just supposed to watch.”
“And that’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to watch. And if I see anything I don’t like, I’ll come back out and we’ll wait.”
“You will not,” Da says. “You’ll show off, do something brave. And stupid.”
“You know,” Boo says, “I was doing just fine until you came along.” He turns and faces the road, a dark ribbon in the moonlight. “We’ve got some brush on this side of the road. Stay close to it, and duck in if you hear a car.” Without waiting for a response, he starts toward the factory.
“IT’S THE CELL network guy,” Ren says, holding out the cordless phone to Ton.
“Give me the phone number for Rafferty’s woman,” Ton says. Into the phone he says, “Hi, Poy. Thanks for calling. I’m sorry to interrupt your evening, but this’ll just take a minute. Listen, I’ve had a theft from one of my businesses… No, nothing serious, but you can’t let these things go. Got to make an example, or other people start to get ambitious, you know what I mean?” He laughs, extending a hand for the slip of paper on which Ren has written Rose’s phone number. He opens and closes the hand quickly several times to hurry Ren. “She’s got her cell phone on,” he says into the telephone, “and I need a location.” He takes the slip of paper from Ren, glances at it, listens for a moment, and says, “Wait.” To Ren he says, “How long since you checked to see whether she’s still got the phone?”
“Kai called a few hours back.”
“Call again, now.”
“But we already-”
“Do it. I’m not going through all this and then sending out a bunch of people to find a phone that’s in a trash can somewhere.”
“Fine.” With a glance at the paper from which he copied the number, Ren dials. He closes his eyes as he waits and then opens them, listens, and disconnects. “The little girl answered,” he says.
“Fine. They’ll be together.” Into the phone Ton says, “Here’s the number. How close can you get?” He goes to the big desk, sits down, and powers up a computer. “No,” he says. “I doubt she’s got a GPS phone. Probably just some junk she bought used. Does it matter?” He clicks a mouse to bring up Google Earth and positions the cursor over Bangkok. “Really,” he says. “Within fifty meters? That’s amazing. Listen, give it to me in coordinates if you can. I want to try to locate it on the computer.”
Kai comes into the room and looks first at Ton and then at Ren.
“It’s the guy at the phone company,” Ren says quietly. “Tracking down the woman and the girl.”
“I’m ready,” Ton says, with a pencil in his free hand. “Just read it to me.” He writes some numbers on the pad and says, “As close as fifty meters, huh? Well, I owe you. And I’m sorry about the bother. Go back to your party.” He drops the phone on the desk and starts to punch numbers into the computer. “Where are you?” he asks out loud. “Let’s just zoom in a little bit-” The sentence ends in a surprised puff of air. He sits perfectly still, staring at the screen. Both Kai and Ren are looking at him.
Finally Ton tears his eyes from the computer. “Get me four guys right now,” he says. “Guys who don’t much care what they have to do and don’t have any idea who you work for. You won’t believe where you’re going to take them.”
“WHOEVER IT WAS,” Da says, looking at the phone, “they hung up.”
“Where did you get that?” Boo says, taking the phone out of her hand.
“It was on the floor at the shack.”
“And you picked it up.”
She reaches for it, but he puts it behind his back. “Nobody wanted it,” she protests. “Everybody else had one.”
“And you left it on.”
“Well,” she says, “what good is it if it’s off? Oh, come on, I never had one before.”
“And you haven’t got one now,” Boo says. He powers the phone off, brings his arm back, and throws it over the nearest fence.
“Hey,” Da says.
He steps toward her, showing her a face that’s all muscle. “Suppose it had rung while we were inside? Suppose we’re watching something we’re not supposed to see, and your damn phone rings. Has anybody else got one that’s on?”
One of the boys holds one up. “It’s on silent.”
“Turn it off.”
“Okay, okay.”
“Anything else stupid?” Boo asks. “Any alarm clocks? Talking dolls? Anybody got squeakies in their tennis shoes?”
Nobody answers him.
“When we get to the gate, you two”-he points at Da and one of the boys-“you wait across the street. Get behind some bushes. You,” he says to the other boy, the smaller of the two. “You come just inside the gate and to one side of it. Keep your eyes on me as long as you can. Relay any signal I give you. If I want you, I’ll just wave you in. Two fingers means call some more kids. But if there’s trouble”-he holds up his right hand, fingers splayed-“five fingers means run for your lives, got it? In different directions. When you know you’re clear, get back to where we got off the bikes and find a place to hide there. We’ll meet up there and figure out what’s next.”
Nobody says anything. Boo holds up his hand again, two fingers extended. “Means what?”
“Phone kids,” says the smaller boy.
“And?” He displays all five fingers.
“Run,” Da says.
Boo looks directly into her eyes. “And you’d better.”
AFTER REN AND Kai leave to pick up their muscle, Ton remains at his desk. It seems like a long time since he’s been alone in this room. He interlaces his fingers and rests his chin on them, and then he closes his eyes to eliminate distraction while he works his way through a conversation he does not want to have.
The position he’s in now is the one he dreamed of when he was a young man, the outcome he’d hoped for when he married into a ranking family by taking the scandal daughter, the one no one could manage, the woman who has become the wife he never sees. It’s taken him years of patient labor to build the trust of those above him, but he’s in his element now: behind the scenes, working in partnership with the kingdom’s most powerful men to maintain the order of things. To keep the kingdom secure, to keep the proper class-the educated class, the traditional leaders-in charge. To keep the nation moving forward. Thailand is already the wealthiest state in Southeast Asia, and Ton has become an important part of the group that has worked in an unbroken line, generation after generation, to accomplish that.
And, of course, he’s gotten very rich doing it.
But there are things about it he hates. There are times in the past week when he’s felt like a thug. Having to associate with Ren and Kai-having them in his house-has been almost physically painful at times. But there was no alternative. There was no possibility of allowing the usual four or five levels of management to know about the arrangement with Pan. It would have been in the papers within weeks of their agreement. He’ll have to do something about Ren and Kai, but he can worry about that later.
Now is the problem. Things are going outside the lines and have been ever since the reporter had to be killed, and he’s moments from a conversation that actually frightens him. He can’t remember the last time he was frightened.
He is working on his third possible opening, trying to find a way to position the discussion without its leading to something disastrous being said, when he becomes aware of a regular fluctuation of light, visible even through his closed eyelids. With a sigh of resignation, he opens his eyes and looks at the halogen lamp on his desk, which is blinking on and off. He pushes his chair back a foot or two and reaches down to the lowest drawer, which he pulls open. The files stacked inside are bulky and hard to handle, and he needs both hands to remove them and put them on the desk. The desk lamp continues to flicker as he leans back down to the drawer. On the bottom edge, his fingers find the small metal tab and pull it forward. A little snicking sound signals the rise, no more than half an inch, of the drawer’s false bottom. Ton lifts the bottom panel to a vertical position and pulls out the flat telephone that’s stored beneath it.
Only one person has this number.
Ton breathes twice, swallows, picks up the receiver, and says, “Yes, sir.”
“My boy,” says the man on the other end. “How are you?”
“I’m somewhat preoccupied. I’m sorry to have bothered you, but there’s a problem.”
“No bother, no bother. Before we get to the problems, I want to apologize.”
This line had not arisen in any of his visualizations of the conversation. “For what, General?”
“I didn’t like your idea, the farang snooping around in Pan’s past. Too fancy, I thought. Well, I was wrong. It was obvious almost immediately that Pan wouldn’t get to election day without all that bothersome material coming to light. Got me thinking in other directions.”
“It did?”
“Yes, and I have exactly what we need. But first, tell me about this bullshit announcement he’s threatening to make.”
“It’s Porthip. With Porthip dying-”
“Your farang went to the hospital tonight,” the general says, as though Ton weren’t speaking. “With a cop and another man. The other man could have been a cop, too.”
The back of Ton’s shirt is suddenly damp. “He did?”
“He did. And Porthip told him.”
“He told him? You mean, about Snakeskin?”
“About Snakeskin, about you. You personally. You want to hear the tape?”
“No. That…um, that won’t be necessary.”
“You didn’t know your farang was there, did you?”
This is the topic he knows he can’t control. All he can do is step up to it. “No. He shook his tail. I can’t use my best people, because they know who I am, and of course I’m connected to you. So I have to use contract guys, and they’re not-”
“I understand,” the general says.
Ton tugs his shirt away from his skin and manages not to sigh in relief. “Thank you. But if Porthip’s talking-”
“Don’t worry. We’ve had the limiter removed from his morphine drip, and the nurse has traded his pain pills for junk. An antifungal medicine, I think. Without the pills he’ll medicate himself out of existence by morning. Kinder that way, really.”
“If there’s an autopsy-”
“Not your business,” the general says, and his tone has stiffened. “You already have more, apparently, on your plate than you can handle. But even if there is an autopsy, even if some zealot decides to check the cause of death for a man who was, after all, a terminal-cancer patient, they’ll be expecting to find morphine in his system, won’t they? Worst comes to worst, it’s a compassionate death, maybe a slap on the hand for the supervising doctor.”
“Yes, sir.”
“The announcement.”
“I told Pan early this morning that we’d discuss things further in a couple of weeks. He said I wasn’t in charge.”
“Excuse me?”
“With Porthip dying, he said, there wasn’t anybody who could hold the factory over his head anymore. At least nobody who had actually been part of it. So he said we were no longer running his campaign. He’ll still work with us, he says-he’ll need help when he’s elected-but he thinks he’ll win in a landslide now that the fire can’t come back to haunt him. In fact, he said he was going to use it.”
“How the hell does he propose to do that?”
“Without Porthip, he says, he’s the hero of the fire. What he’s going to do is to get the press together-and you know how they’ll show up, especially after the malaria party-and he’s going to announce his plan to turn the factory into a monument to the people who died there. He’ll talk about how he saw the smoke from the road, about how he tried to save them, show his scars. He’s going to say that’s why he bought the place, so he could consecrate it. He’ll clean it out some and make it safe for the public to visit, and he’s going to carve into the walls the names of the people who died there and turn the big workroom in the front into a gallery, with melted machines and photos of the place after the fire. He’s finding pictures of the people who worked there-while they were still alive, I mean-and he’s going to put those with the other pictures. And then he’ll announce a grant of five million baht to fund a commission to look into the working conditions of people who do bottom-wage piecework, especially people who come to Bangkok from the northeast. And after all that, he’ll close things out by announcing that he’s running for the National Assembly, where he can really do something about these issues.”
“That’s it,” the general says. “That’s why he insisted on getting hold of the factory. And it’s brilliant. He’ll have every vote in the northeast. Too bad we can’t work with him.”
“He’s going to make the announcement at the…” Ton trails off, looking at a spot in the air in front of him. His face is suddenly warm.
“At the factory?” the general says.
“Yes, sir.” Ton picks up his cell phone but drops it again. He rapidly flexes the fingers of his free hand, looking down at the phone.
“It would be extremely effective,” the general says. “You wouldn’t be able to count all the votes it would bring. It would probably put me back on the sleeping pills. But thanks to you, thanks to your farang, I’ve found an alternative. Have you been following this kid-oh, well, at my age everybody’s a kid-this young man who started out with the sidewalk popcorn machines?”
“I know something about him.”
“Branching out. A couple of guesthouses, some gift shops in the lobbies of hotels and small airports. Got the rights to an American restaurant franchise called Greens. Heard of it?”
“No, sir.”
“Just the usual burgers and junk, but they have some sort of handbook full of policies to make the business greener, you know? More environmentally responsible.”
“Like what?”
“Who cares? Maybe they use the methane from cattle farts to power the stoves. How do I know? Thing is, green is good. Thing is, the kid’s Isaan. Thing is, the kid will listen to reason.”
“But, I mean, with Pan on the ticket-if he’s running against Pan-no matter how good he is, Pan will wallop him, won’t he?”
The general says nothing. In the silence that follows, Ton picks up his cell phone and scrolls down toward Captain Teeth’s number. Then he stops scrolling and says, “Oh.” He puts the cell phone back on the desk. “I see.”
“And think how the votes would pour in,” the general says, “if he were stepping into the shoes of a martyr.”
Ton says, “Yes.”
“Then we’re finished?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good work,” the general says. “Without your farang I never would have looked around.” The general clears his throat. “You can get your hands on him, right? Not that he could prove anything, but just for neatness’ sake.”
“Yes, sir. I know where his wife is.”
“Good, good. You’re a valuable asset, Ton.”
“Thank you, sir.”
The general hangs up.
Ton puts the phone back into the the drawer and replaces the false bottom. He closes the drawer and realizes he forgot to put the files back, so he swears between his teeth, opens the drawer again, and drops the files into it. He is conscious of a prickling of sweat at his hairline.
He wishes he could talk to his wife.
When he’s finished straightening the files, he sits looking down at the open drawer for a full minute. Then he picks up his phone, scrolls the rest of the way down, and presses “call.” He waits, drumming the fingers of his left hand on the desk. Then he says, “Listen. I need one of them, either the woman or the girl, to be able to talk. It may be the only way to bring Rafferty in. But here’s the important thing: I can’t figure why they’re at the factory unless Pan’s there.”
“Okay,” Captain Teeth says.
“If he’s there, take him out.”
“You mean-”
“You know what I mean. Take him out, and take out anybody who sees anything. Just leave me one of those females in a condition to talk on the phone.”
Captain Teeth says, “You’re the boss.”
“And one more thing. If Pan goes down tonight, we have to talk about what happens to the guys who are with you.”
“Well,” Captain Teeth says, “I’m not related to any of them.”
The generator sounds like it has a respiratory disease.
It sputters, coughs, hiccups. Then it makes a phlegmy, ratcheting, throat-clearing sound for ten seconds or so, and the whole pathology starts over.
It’s so loud, Boo thinks, that he could ride in on horseback and no one would hear him.
The big black Mercedes sits empty at the end of the cracked drive, a car-shaped hole in the darkness, its motor ticking as it cools. Boo keeps himself to the darkest areas, moving from the shadow of one bush to another to avoid the thin, chilly-looking moonlight. The ground underfoot is littered with chunks of concrete, jagged-edged, irregular, heavy enough to pitch him facedown if he trips on one. Spiderwebs lace the spaces between the weeds, fat spiders straddling the centers, waiting patiently for blood. Boo isn’t particularly afraid of spiders, but he doesn’t like walking face-first into one.
And the place smells as if the hair of a million women was burned inside.
Boo can stroll the darkest, narrowest alley in Bangkok on a moonless night without so much as a bump in his pulse rate, but this weedy field with its blackened, abandoned factory makes the hair on his arms stand up. The generator goes into a paroxysm of coughing, and suddenly there is light on the bottom floor of the building.
Or is there? The interior is so black that there’s nothing for the light to bounce off; it’s like looking into an infinite space. If it weren’t for the long rectangles of illumination spilling onto the weeds through the doors and windows and shining on the newly visible profile of the Mercedes, Boo’s not sure he’d even register the light. But he knows one thing: Light or no light, the place doesn’t feel any friendlier.
With the noise of the generator clattering in his ears, he doesn’t hear the person behind him, and when the hand lands on his arm, he goes straight up into the air and comes down facing the opposite way, one hand clutching a five-inch knife that’s normally sheathed inside his right front pocket. When he sees who it is, he gasps in relief several times and then knots her T-shirt in his hand to drag her down into a crouch, out of sight from the building.
Da says, “We have to leave.”
“Be quiet. Rafferty’s coming with the cops. We’ll argue then.”
“Now,” she says. “We have to leave now.”
Boo looks back at the building, sees nothing inside the big black room, just the sharp-edged rectangles of light falling through the door and windows. He registers that the windows are barred with thick rods of what looks like iron. “Why?” he whispers. “Why do we have to leave?”
“This place is full of ghosts,” Da says. “They’re everywhere.”
“Don’t be silly,” Boo says, feeling the goose bumps pop out on his arms.
Da says, and her voice is shaking, “They’re on fire.”
“Well, yeah,” Boo says, keeping his own voice steady. “Look at the place. Got burned to shit.”
“Please. These are not ghosts you can talk to. They want blood. They’ve been waiting for blood.”
“Go across the street,” Boo says. “They’ll stay here. Ghosts don’t just wander around. I need to see what’s happening in there.”
“You have to come with me,” Da says. “I can’t have Peep here. If we stay, there will be blood. There will be.”
“Then go, go. Get out of here. Get Peep across the street.”
Da starts to reply, but her voice splinters into “Ohhhhhhh” as a figure inside walks past the door.
“Shut up,” Boo hisses. “It’s just the fat guy, Pan. The little one’s got to be around somewhere. He was driving. He’s not in the car, so he’s somewhere else. Look, he’s only a guy.” Then he puts a hand on her shoulder and says, barely louder than a thought, “Don’t move.”
Dr. Ravi comes through the door of the factory and picks his way down the driveway to the Mercedes. He opens the trunk and leans in, and when he straightens up, he has something coiled over one shoulder and bulky objects dangling from each hand. Inside the factory door, he puts down the things in his hands and pulls the coil off his shoulder and drops it to the floor.
“Lights,” Boo says. “And cord. Electrical cord.”
But Dr. Ravi is already on his way back to the car. This time he removes long pieces of something that looks like pipe. Once inside again, he takes two of the lengths of pipe and begins to screw them together. Then Pan appears at the door and picks up the long coil of electrical cord. He unloops it, backing away until he is out of sight.
“What are they doing?” Boo whispers. “Are they going to light the place? And why are they doing this themselves? Pan’s rich. There must be a hundred people who could do this for him.” He squeezes Da’s shoulder. “Go now. Tell the kid at the gate-his name is Tee-to come up here. I want him to use that video camera.”
Da puts both hands on his arm. “I’m telling you. You should go, too.”
“Ghosts leave me alone,” Boo says. “I’ve come too close to dying, too often. They look at me and know it’s just a matter of time.”
“You don’t know anything,” Da says furiously. He hears the brush rustling for a couple of seconds, and then the generator drowns out the sounds of her movement.
A moment later Pan appears, pushing something black and shapeless across the floor, right to left. Things-pieces of it-fall off as he shoves, and he kicks the fragments out of the way. And then he reappears, moving in the opposite direction, picking up things as he goes, and ten or twelve heartbeats later he carries an armload of shapeless objects past the door. Whatever he’s arranging, it’s being set up on the side of the room that’s to the left of the door.
Boo looks over his shoulder just in time to see Da slip through the gate, heading across the street. Other than the gate, there seems to be no way out; as far as Boo can see, the fence, at least three meters tall, surrounds the overgrown plot of ground on which the burned factory is centered. He’s thinking, Keep the path to the gate clear, when he hears the boy who’d been stationed at the gate, Tee, coming up behind him. Without looking back, Boo says, “You stay here. I’m going to check the window to the left over there.”
Tee says, “I don’t like it here.”
“Well,” Boo says, “you’ve got a lot of company. Try to keep me in sight, but don’t let them see you.”
“Yeah, but…”
“But what?”
“But I don’t want to be here alone.”
“That damn Da,” Boo says. “Ghosts everywhere.” He straightens partway and looks down at Tee. “You going to be okay?” It’s more a threat than a question.
Tee averts his eyes. “I guess.”
“Won’t be long.”
As Boo starts to move to his left, he sees Dr. Ravi, who’s still standing in the doorway, unfold three legs at the bottom of one of the pipe-like objects to create a tall tripod. He bends down and picks up one of the lights and starts to screw it onto the top of the tripod. He has to stand on tiptoe to tighten the light. He handles the objects clumsily. They’re obviously unfamiliar to him, and assembling them fully engages his attention.
At the edge of the driveway, Boo pauses and steadies his breathing. The driveway is about fifteen feet wide, and with the Mercedes behind him there’s no cover at all. He waits until Dr. Ravi turns his back to the door, picks up the light, now securely atop the pole, and carries it left, out of sight. Then Boo crouches low, takes one last look at the door and the window, and sprints, bent almost double, over the cracked asphalt. He has made it most of the distance across when his toe catches on the edge of a fractured, uptilted piece of paving. He windmills his arms, he tries desperately to find a point of balance, but he was moving too fast, and there’s no question. He’s going down.
At the last possible second, he realizes he’s going to land on his elbows, and he pulls them back to avoid breaking them, and he hits flat on his stomach. The grunt that the impact forces out of him can be heard even over the generator. He remains absolutely still, holding his breath, his eyes glued to the doorway, wishing fiercely for invisibility, and he hears someone inside say, “Somebody’s out there.”
And then something cold and wet touches his arm.
“WHY DR. RAVI?” Arthit asks.
The taxi is absolutely rocketing now that the densest parts of the city are behind them, the driver using flashing headlights, a nasal horn, and a well-oiled accelerator pedal to muscle the rest of the world out of the way.
“Process of elimination,” Rafferty says as the landscape flashes past. “What it comes down to is that nobody else knows as much about what’s happening in Pan’s life, no one else is in daily contact with him. Let’s say Dr. Ravi applied for the job because he thought, like a lot of people, that Pan was a great man.”
“He probably could have been,” Arthit says.
“Pan?” the driver asks. “You mean the one with all the money? What a guy.”
Arthit says, “I rest my case.”
“And maybe one reason Dr. Ravi wanted the job was that it hadn’t escaped his attention that Pan could have a significant political future,” Rafferty says. “And let’s say that Dr. Ravi has unexpectedly democratic sentiments and he thinks that Pan might be the person who could finally give the poor a say in how the country is run.”
“I’d vote for him,” the driver says.
“Just drive,” Kosit says.
“I’d like to be next in line for his girls, too,” the driver says.
“Here’s the thing,” Arthit says to the driver. “Shut up and drive, or when we get there, I’ll shoot you.”
Rafferty looks over at him, and Arthit shrugs.
“Cops,” the driver grumbles.
“And get us there in ten minutes,” Arthit says, “and you’ll make an extra five thousand baht.”
The driver says, “Driving.”
“So he gets the job, Dr. Ravi does,” Rafferty says, “and the first thing he does is go through everything in the files, probably including some stuff he shouldn’t have seen at all. As he told me, he’s the media director. He needs to know whether there are any skeletons in the closet. He’s expecting one or two-nobody gets as rich as Pan without a few skeletons folded away here and there-but he’s not prepared for a hundred and twenty-one of them.”
Arthit thinks about it for a moment. “How do you know he found out about that?”
Rafferty also thinks for a second, then shakes his head. “Actually, I don’t. But he knew what Snakeskin was.”
Arthit says, “Mmmmm.”
“So let’s say he didn’t know about what happened at the factory. But the deal with Ton, with Snakeskin, is happening in real time, in the office Pan shares with Dr. Ravi, and Dr. Ravi found out about it.”
He breaks off as Arthit touches his knee and lifts his eyebrows at the driver, whose eyes keep going to the rearview mirror.
“And that information…um, confounded Dr. Ravi’s expectations, and all of a sudden his political allegiances shifted. I mean, drastically. Whether he knew about the fire or not, he suddenly realizes that the archangel is in bed with the archfiend. So Dr. Ravi decides to use his privileged position to work against you-know-who’s ever getting elected to anything, and here comes the last thing on earth he wants to see: some hack writer, and a farang to boot, all set to crank out a biography of the no-longer-great man.”
“Why would he think the book would be sympathetic?”
“My fault. I kicked him out of the office before I told Pan about the threats from the other side, before we came to our understanding. When the door opens, half an hour later, Pan and I are getting along great, so great that I’ve been invited to the malaria thing, and then Pan’s lending my wife diamonds worth millions, and I’m apparently allowed to drop by whenever I want. So sure, Dr. Ravi figures the book will be a whitewash, a fan letter. I’m going to turn Pan into Gandhi.”
Arthit scratches his head. “So it was Dr. Ravi who warned you not to write the book.”
“Yeah. I don’t think he was actually going to carry out the threats. He thought I’d scare off easily, and I would have if it hadn’t been for Ton. But he got some people who are really serious about their politics to keep an eye on me, and when he told them to discourage me for a second or third time, they went a little overboard.”
Arthit glances at the bandaged hand. “I’d say so.”
“I’d like to keep listening,” the driver says, “but we’re almost there. It’s the next right.”
Boo rolls over four or five times, as fast as he can-sky, driveway, sky, driveway-heading for the weeds, putting distance between himself and the…the whatever it was. He reaches the edge of the drive and worms his way into the weeds, pulling himself along on his elbows, just as a brilliant light pours out of the window on the left. The light is pointed directly at Boo. He knows he’s been spotted, and he’s on the verge of getting to his knees so he can run, but the light slowly slides past him. He’s just realizing that they didn’t see him after all when the light picks out an old gray dog, sitting in the center of the driveway, scratching its ear.
“A dog,” somebody inside says.
The light, Boo can see now, is the one Dr. Ravi was assembling. He’s standing in the window, holding the pipe so he can turn the light right and left without burning his hands on the fixture. The dog gets up slowly, obviously stiff in the joints, gives its ribs a halfhearted scratch with a back paw, looks at Boo, and wags its tail. Then it starts to amble toward him.
“Where’s it going?” a different voice-Pan-asks.
Boo is frantically trying to wave the dog off. A little creakily, the dog goes down on its front legs, paws wide, ready to play.
“Maybe there’s somebody there,” Dr. Ravi says.
“Gun,” Pan says. He is still out of sight.
“It’s probably some kid. Who’s going to show up with a dog?”
“Gun,” Pan snaps.
Dr. Ravi lets go of the light, and it ends up pointing at the spot where Boo left Tee. Boo peers through the weeds, trying to see something, anything-the pale oval of a face, the gleam of eyes. But there’s nothing. So the good news is that they don’t see Tee. The bad news is that the dog is headed straight for Boo.
Pan’s silhouette looms in the doorway, throwing a shadow twenty feet long. He holds the gun in both hands, barrel up, a stance that looks professional. Boo pulls himself farther into the weeds, and the dog trots happily along behind him. Bringing the gun down in front of him, Pan starts in the dog’s direction.
“Khun Pan,” Dr. Ravi calls as headlights sweep across the sagging gate. “Somebody’s coming.”
IN THE YELLOW cones of light, Rafferty sees kids scattering into the dark. “Well,” he says to Arthit, “at least they’re doing what they’re supposed to do.”
Arthit says, “Pull past the gate, maybe ten, fifteen meters. Stop in the middle of the road. I don’t want to climb out into all that fucking plant life.”
“The big man’s afraid of bugs,” the driver says, but he does as he’s told. “Here?”
“Fine.” Rafferty opens his door. “That’s thirty-three hundred on the meter, plus another five thousand for speed. What the hell, call it ten thousand.” He drops the money over the back of the seat.
The driver grabs the bills as though he’s afraid Rafferty will regain his sanity. “Want me to wait?”
“No. Just go.” To Kosit, Rafferty says, “Close the door softly. There’s one chance in a thousand they didn’t see or hear us.”
“Amateur night,” Arthit grumps, climbing out. He eases his door closed and taps the window, signaling the driver to go, but Rafferty pulls his door open again.
“Listen,” he says to the driver. “Pull a little farther past and then turn around and drive out, slowly, like you’re looking for something. Got it?”
“For ten thousand? I’ll drive out sideways.”
“Just do it like I said. Like you made a wrong turn and you’re heading out again.”
“Fine.”
Rafferty closes the door again, and the three of them watch the driver make a three-point turn and creep back the way he came. They stand silently for a long moment, and finally Kosit says, “Think that’ll fool anybody?”
“Oh, who knows? Better than nothing.”
“Hurry,” Arthit whispers, grabbing Rafferty’s arm. He pulls them into the hedge that lines the factory wall. A moment later they see Pan come through the gate. He’s carrying a gun.
All three of them hold their breath.
Pan comes into the middle of the road, looking up and down, and turns to follow the taxi’s taillights as it makes the left at the end of the block. Then, gun still extended, he goes back through the gate.
“Remember,” Rafferty whispers. “He’s not just a fat rich guy with a gun. He did a lot of enforcement work.”
“In the file that got vaporized,” Arthit says, “he was figured for three killings.”
THE DOG HAS given up on Boo and returned to the driveway, which is still warm from the sun. It sits down as though it owns the place and watches Pan approach.
Halfway to the dog, Pan stops as suddenly as though he’s been frozen in place. He remains there, motionless, while Boo, watching, counts silently past fifty. Pan is waiting to hear something, waiting for someone to shift or fidget, waiting for anything that seems wrong. Without moving anything but his head, he slowly surveys the front of the factory and then, very deliberately, turns in a complete circle. Then he waits again, holding the gun two-handed, pointing at the sky.
Dr. Ravi appears in the door of the factory, and Boo sees Pan’s shoulders relax, and the man starts to walk toward the door. He makes a detour to scratch the dog’s head and ears, and when he’s done, the dog stands and follows him into the factory.
“Let’s get this finished,” Pan says.
Boo rises, taking advantage of the fact that they both have their backs turned. He works his way farther left, his eyes fixed on the barred window. Five or six weedy meters from it, he lines up a clear view and settles in to watch.
Inside, bright light sweeps blackened walls. Dr. Ravi carries one of the tripod assemblies to the far wall and points it at the end of the room to the left, which is out of Boo’s line of sight. Shortly afterward Pan shuffles past again, pushing another black object, sagging and half melted. Boo can almost identify the shape it used to have, but not quite. Still, he knows that he recognizes it.
“Give me a hand with these,” Pan says, and Dr. Ravi moves across the window, heading right. With no one at either window or the door, Boo stoops, brings up a handful of dirt, and rubs it over his face and arms. Then, putting his feet down very slowly, he moves a couple of meters closer and a little to his right. If Pan and Ravi look straight out at him, they’ll see him, but they’d have to be looking for him.
He hopes.
A scraping sound that sets his teeth on edge precedes the sight of both Pan and Dr. Ravi, each shoving another blackened object across the floor, the dog following happily along. This time Boo sees the things for what they are.
They’re sewing machines.
For a frozen, gelid moment that puckers his flesh, Boo can almost see the women who sat at them, and he smells again, overpoweringly this time, the stench of burned hair. Suddenly Boo agrees with Da. This is no place for the living.
For another fifteen or twenty minutes, the two men inside work, pushing the machines across the floor and collecting more of the smaller, blackened things. Everything is taken left, to the area of the room they are…what? Decorating? Arranging? Boo can’t figure it out, even when they talk to each other.
“To the right,” Pan says. “Five or six on each side.”
“We could get this done a lot faster with some help.”
“I’m the only one who knows what it should look like. Who knows what it did look like.”
Dr. Ravi says, “It’s just theater. Just a press conference.”
“It’s everything,” Pan says.
Boo has been so glued to the window that he’s caught completely by surprise by the shape at the door, the man who is suddenly standing just outside it, and it takes him a moment to recognize the voice that says, “No. It’s not quite everything.”
Pan turns, and his hand goes to his belt, but Rafferty says, “Don’t.” He’s got a gun in his hand, the gun Boo gave back to him, pointed at Pan’s substantial gut, and he pushes through the door, and the two cops follow him into the room, both holding guns in a way that looks loose and expert.
Boo moves right, signaling to Tee. When the boy stands up, Boo holds an imaginary camera to his eye and points Tee to the window he’s been watching through. Tee nods and wades through the weeds, and the last man to go through the door, the cop in uniform, glances back at the sound, registers the boy, and then turns around to face the room again.
“What’s this about?” Pan demands.
“Oh,” Rafferty says, “it’s a long list. Let’s start with you pulling the gun from under your shirt with two fingers and holding it out. Thumb and little finger, on the handle only. Barrel down.”
Pan says, “There’s no need for this,” but he does as he’s told, and Arthit comes forward and takes the gun. He puts it beneath his own shirt and then backs away again, his gun still aimed at Pan.
“So that’s one thing,” Rafferty says. “And then there’s this.” He turns to the window and waves Boo in.
Pan waits as calmly as though he’s just enduring a pause in the conversation. He pays no attention to the guns that are trained on him. But when Boo comes through the door, he takes a sudden breath, and then his eyes close briefly. When they open, they are fixed on the floor.
Rafferty says, “Surprised to see him?”
“I’m surprised to see any of you,” Pan says, but his voice is mostly air, and he still has not looked up. Color is climbing his face.
“You sold him,” Rafferty says. He is speaking Thai. “You. The hope of the poor and downtrodden. You sold him and a little girl who doesn’t have anything in the world except a baby that isn’t even hers. You sold them to a gangster who was going to kill all of them, except the baby. All he’d do to the baby is sell it.”
Pan keeps his eyes on the floor, but Dr. Ravi is staring at Rafferty as though he’s suddenly begun speaking in tongues.
“And you didn’t even have to,” Rafferty says. His voice feels like it’s being squeezed through a very small opening. “You could have bought Peep out of petty cash.”
Pan’s pink mouth contracts and loosens, then contracts again, and he says to the floor, “I tried.” The dog, which has been standing next to Dr. Ravi, eyeing the newcomers, hears something in Pan’s voice and goes and sits at his feet, looking up, concerned. Automatically, Pan reaches down and scratches the dog’s ears.
Rafferty says, “Oh, well, you tried. That makes everything all right.”
“He wouldn’t do it,” Pan says. “He wanted-he wanted-to deal with it his way.” He straightens up. The dog paws at his pants leg, wanting more, but Pan ignores it. “He was afraid she’d talk, the girl would, to someone. He was afraid you’d arrange for her to talk to someone.”
“And that made sense to you. So you said, ‘Okay, here’s where she is. Go kill them.’”
Pan says, “It wasn’t like that.”
“No? What was it like?”
“Wichat…knows things, from when we worked together.”
“Right,” Rafferty says. “He knows what happened here. That makes him dangerous, since you’ve decided it’s worth selling who you are in exchange for power.”
Dr. Ravi says to Rafferty, “Wait a minute. What side are you on?”
“Forget it,” Rafferty says. “So you were wrong. Get over it.” He comes another few feet into the room and looks at the arrangement at the far end. The lights are focused to create a sort of stage on which eleven blackened and sagging sewing machines have been arranged in a loose semicircle with a space in the middle. Two enormous photos of the burning factory have been put up on the smoke-black walls. Set in the space between the sewing machines is the platform Pan stood on when he gave his speech at the Garden of Eden. On the floor in front of the platform, ringed by the ghostly machines, is a heap of burned shoes, curled and shriveled fragments of leather and charred cloth, half-melted rubber.
“Are those really from this fire?” Rafferty says, pointing at the shoes. He can barely speak.
“Yes,” Pan says.
“And you’re using them,” Rafferty says, “for a photo op.” He spits on the floor.
“What happened here-” Pan begins.
“I know what happened here,” Rafferty says. “I know everything. I know you tried to save people. I also know you’re the one who locked them in. And I know how you used their deaths to make yourself rich, to get backing from people who normally wouldn’t have pissed on you. Porthip because he felt you earned his support and Ton because he decided that he’d better own you if you were going to run for office. And you sold yourself to him.”
“No, he just thought I did,” Pan begins. “But, really, I-”
“And when you sold yourself, you also sold the people who died here. Is there anything left? Is there anything you haven’t sold? And who did you sell it to? Everything you were supposed to stand for. You sold it to a man who hates the people you grew up with, squeezes blood out of them at every opportunity. You know, the kind of people you used to be, the kind of people who died here. And now you’re going to…to what? Cash in on their deaths, right? You’re going to use these people’s deaths as currency to buy votes.”
Pan says, “You don’t understand. Porthip, Ton-people like Ton-own this country. They’ve owned it forever, and they’ll never let go of it until there are people like me in office. People who are the real Thailand, not the Chinese Thai who have had everything for centuries. People like that will never share power with-”
“People like that?” Rafferty says. “People like that? I know about people like that. The woman I married was whored out by people like that. But let me ask you, Mr. Man of the Soil, how much of yourself do you think you can sell before you become people like that? A girl whose river was stolen, a baby snatched from its mother, a street kid. You were going to sell them. The people who died here, you’re going to use them. Who the hell do you think you are now?”
Pan’s eyes are everywhere. He clears his throat and says, “I-”
“Don’t bother,” Rafferty says. “It’s all over your face. Look, even the dog’s given up on you.”
And in fact the dog has gotten up and is walking toward the door, looking past Boo. And then he stops and his ears go up, and he lowers his head and begins to growl.
“Poke,” Arthit says, but the door is suddenly crowded with men, and in front of them, with Captain Teeth’s arm around her throat and his gun at her head, is Da. Even with death touching her temple, she keeps an arm wrapped tightly around the cashmere shawl that holds Peep.
Boo takes an involuntary step toward her, but one of the men racks his automatic, and the boy freezes.
“Not one move,” Captain Teeth says. “Nobody. Not one move. Anybody twitches and the girl and the kid are dead on the floor, got it?”
No one speaks. The only sound is the husky growl of the dog, its head now low as it looks up at Captain Teeth.
“I count three guns,” Captain Teeth says. “I want those guns turned around slowly, so you’re holding them by the barrel. Do it now.”
Rafferty, Arthit, and Kosit reverse their guns so the handles are pointing toward Captain Teeth.
“Good. Now hold them up in the air, way up. Good, good. And turn around so your backs are to us. Now bring down the hands with the guns, hold them out shoulder length, arms stiff, by the barrel. I don’t want to see any bent elbows. Bring the arm slowly behind you and just stay there.”
Rafferty hears feet moving, and then the gun is removed from his hand. A moment later Captain Teeth says, “All of you, turn back around. Slowly. All the way around.”
When Rafferty is facing the door again, he sees Captain Teeth, still clutching Da, at the center of a group of five men, three of whom hold automatics. They have come several feet into the room, with the door at their backs. Kosit, Arthit, and Rafferty are several feet apart, and eight or ten feet beyond them, near the podium on the other side of the hill of burned shoes, are Pan and Dr. Ravi. Nearest the gunmen, the dog at his side, is Boo.
Captain Teeth makes a show of looking inquisitively around the room. “Where are they?”
“Where are who?” Rafferty says. “The whole world’s here.”
“Your honey. And the kid. We know they’re here.”
“You’re wrong,” Rafferty says.
“Okay, fine. Be an asshole. You,” he says, giving Da a shove that nearly makes her stumble. “Over there. With Fatso and the little guy.” He points his gun at Boo. “You, too, hero. Over there. Take your dog with you.” As Boo moves, the dog resists being led, holding its ground and growling. Boo lets go of him and joins the others. Captain Teeth turns back to Rafferty. “And you and your friends. Over there, with everybody else. Makes you easier to shoot.” He waits there as people move awkwardly through the obstacle course of shoes and melted machines. “Nobody behind anybody, okay? Side by side.” He looks at the setup. “What were you going to do, make a movie?”
“I want to talk to Ton,” Pan says.
“I’ll bet you do. But right now I’m more concerned with our missing girls. One more time,” he says to Rafferty. “Where are they?”
“They’re not here.”
“Bullshit. It was your sweetie’s phone that got us here in the first place. I’m not asking again, I’m just shooting somebody. You, Mr. Policeman.” He aims at Kosit.
“Wait,” Da says. “I had the phone. I took it, and when you called, I answered it.”
“Sure.” Captain Teeth turns to Rafferty. “You ready to see your cop friend die?”
“It was me,” Da says in a strangled voice. “Someone called, and I said hello, and then they hung up.”
Captain Teeth stares at her for a moment. “How many times did you say hello?”
Da swallows. “Once.”
Captain Teeth says, “Show me the phone.”
“I…I don’t have it. He, I mean Boo, he took it away from me, and-”
“Fine. Right. You had it but you don’t have it. You two,” he says to two of the men with guns. “Go through this building, every fucking room. Look under stuff. Look up at the ceilings. There’s a woman and a kid here somewhere, and I need them.”
One of the men glances around and says, “I’d rather stay here.”
“And I’d rather be in bed with five college girls. But I’m not. Get going, or I’ll leave you here when we go back to the city.”
“Okay, okay.” The man who argued looks at the other man who’s been chosen. “Do we have to split up?”
“You can go piggyback for all I care. But find them.”
With obvious reluctance the two men leave the lit room and enter a hallway that leads to the back of the building.
Pan says, “You’re making a mistake.”
“Well, you’ve got the experience to know,” Captain Teeth says. “You’ve fucked up so bad that nobody needs you anymore.”
“Ton,” Pan says. “I need to talk to Ton. He and I can work this out.”
“He’s finished with you. Just shut up and wait. Someone shut that dog up.”
“It doesn’t belong to anybody,” Boo says. “It lives here.” The dog is showing its teeth now, the hair along its spine bristling.
“Well, let’s fix that.” Captain Teeth lowers the barrel of his gun and sights over it. There’s a sudden movement in the group of people between the sewing machines, and within the second it takes Captain Teeth to look up again, Pan has his arms wrapped around Da’s shoulders and is crouched behind her, using her as a shield as he backs toward the door.
“I’m leaving,” he says. He takes a few more steps backward, pulling Da along next to him. Da’s eyes scour the room, looking for help.
“Fuckup,” Captain Teeth says, and he brings the gun up and shoots Da.
The bullet lifts her off her feet and slams her back against Pan. He grabs her by instinct, but then her legs crumple beneath her and she’s dropping, her mouth open in amazement, as she tries to bring the other arm up, tries to get it under Peep. Pan staggers forward, pulled off balance by her weight, and he looks down at her face, at her wide, sightless eyes. The generator, which has been coughing outside, shuts down, and slowly, in the new silence, Pan lowers Da to the floor, his eyes on hers all the way down. At the last moment, he slips a hand beneath her head as it nears the concrete. When she is flat on her back, he eases his hand out from under her and his head comes up, his mouth gaping, and a scream rips itself loose from the center of his belly, a scream that threatens to empty even a man so large, and he stands and spreads his arms, making an even bigger target, moves carefully around Da, and takes two steps toward Captain Teeth.
Captain Teeth fires again, and Pan staggers a half step back, arms still spread as though in invitation, and then moves forward again. Captain Teeth fires again and again, and as Pan shudders and falls, there are shots from Rafferty’s left, and he turns to see Arthit pouring fire into Captain Teeth, using the gun he took from Pan, and as Captain Teeth goes down, Arthit turns and fires at the three men left in the room, dropping one of them, and the other two break for the door and disappear into the night.
The dog ignores the shooting and goes to the heap of clothes and blood that is Da, standing over her as Peep starts to cry. The dog begins to howl.
Kosit goes to Captain Teeth’s body and grabs his gun, then charges back into the factory, after the other two men. Rafferty and Boo drop to their knees on either side of Da, and Boo picks up Peep and rocks him, tears streaming down his face. Rafferty is probing Da’s wrist for a pulse when he hears the shots from the rear of the factory. And then it’s quiet except for the dog’s howls.
THE FACTORY IS a flickering wash of red and blue lights. “It’s over,” Rafferty says into the phone. He is sitting in a patrol car. “It’s not the ending you wanted, but it’s over.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Ton says on the other end of the phone.
“Pan’s dead. So are three of the people you sent after him. You might want to be on the lookout for the other two. This place is wall-to-wall cops. There’s nothing to tie any of it to you-”
“I should think not.”
“Except a videotape of Pan talking about his arrangement with you. The quality’s not real high, but there was plenty of light, and what he said will have quite a bit of news value.”
A pause. When Ton speaks, Rafferty can hear the strain in his voice. “No one will use it.”
“Maybe not. Maybe not for a couple of years, maybe not until things have changed. But things will change, and when they do, these tapes will just be waiting. And do you think there’s a chance the new guys will want to nail you by the wrists and ankles to the pavement on the expressway and back a truck over you?”
“Hypotheticals.”
“Here’s something that’s not hypothetical: My wife and my daughter and I are going home, and we’re going to live there safely and happily, without worrying about looking over our shoulders. And as long as we stay that way, happy and safe, the copies of these tapes will be at the bottom of the ocean. So to speak. But the minute something happens to any of us, they’ll bob up again. These are people you’ll never in a million years be able to identify, people I don’t even know, two or three removes from me, who will know exactly what to do with the tapes, who to give them to. And they will do it, if anything happens to my family and me. Is that clear?”
“As I said, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“You’re going to have to do better than that.”
After a moment Ton says, “I don’t deal well with irritation. The tapes sound irritating.”
“Well, they won’t be, as long as you-”
“And what about you? You have the potential to be irritating.”
“I won’t be. I’ve got people to protect.”
“Yes, you do,” Ton says. “Go home.” He hangs up.
Rafferty folds his phone, closes his eyes, and listens to the ambulance siren die away in the distance.
The living room of Arthit’s house is crowded and noisy. The seat of honor-the reclining chair Arthit bought to watch the American cop shows he and Noi used to laugh at-is occupied by Noi’s mother, a tiny woman with a prodigiously concentrated energy field that keeps her daughters and grandchildren spinning in tight orbits around her. Her wispy silver hair, thinning and uncontrollable, creates a formless nimbus of light around her head that Rafferty thinks is an appropriate effect for a gathering that follows a cremation.
Arthit sits in full uniform on the couch, behind the coffee table. His eyes are red-rimmed, but he’s laughing almost unwillingly at something that’s just been said by the husband of one of Noi’s sisters, an appointed official in a minor province, someone who would have been on Ton’s side if it had come to that.
“He’s going to be all right,” Rose says, following Rafferty’s gaze. “He’s a good man, and he had years and years with a good woman. Everything but the end was a blessing. And who knows about the end? Karma is complicated. Maybe that was a fire they both had to go through.”
“At least he can be a cop again,” Rafferty says. “The kids’ video makes him a hero. He’s the one who took down the thug who killed Pan.”
“That’s such a man reaction,” Rose says.
“Well, he’s a man. What do you want me to do, enroll him in the Chrysanthemum-of-the-Month Club until he feels better? He told me he’d find his way back at his own speed, and having something to do will help. Men have spirits, too, Rose. We’re not floor lamps. Men’s spirits just heal better behind a screen of activity. As of the Sunday-night TV news, he’s the most famous cop in Thailand, and there’s nothing Thanom can do except try to crowd into the newspaper pictures alongside him. The people in the northeast would probably vote for him for prime minister. Not that he’s crazy enough to do anything about it.”
In the dining room, Boo carries Peep in one crooked arm. He’s resplendent in the new clothes Rafferty bought him for the ceremony. Da shines in a pale yellow dress that Rose helped her pick out, with Miaow’s sullen help. The once-spotless sling that supports the cast on Da’s left arm has already been decorated by Boo’s crew with a broad range of enthusiastic drawings that range from flowers and hearts and bright yellow suns to daggers and teeth dripping blood. The other kids, here at Arthit’s insistence, cluster defensively in the breakfast room, wearing clothes so new they creak, and never getting farther than four or five feet from the food.
Boo and Miaow have avoided each other. Not a word has passed between them.
And Rafferty has lost his Carpenters album and gained a cast on his own left hand, courtesy of the doctor who took care of Da. When he’d gone to the hospital to pay for her care, the doctor had taken one horrified look at the bandages and said, “Who did this? A plumber?”
“A dentist,” Rafferty said, and the doctor grabbed his sleeve and pulled him back into an examination room.
Rafferty’s cell phone rings. It’s his old phone, the one that’s been off for most of the past two days.
“Sorry,” he says to Rose. “I’ve got to go outside to hear this.” He opens the phone and says, “Hang on a minute,” then crosses the living room and steps through the front door into a warm, violet evening. “Hello.”
“Hello.” It’s a man’s voice. The English is unaccented. “I’d tell you who I am, but you don’t know me. I’ve been asked to call you to make sure you’ve noticed that everyone you love is alive and well. I assume you’re aware of that.”
Rafferty says, “Resoundingly.”
“Good. I’ve also been asked to point out that their present good health is in the nature of a favor. That, essentially, you’ve been done a good turn.”
“That’s one way to look at it. Another way is to say we had an agreement.”
“Don’t overvalue the strength of your deterrent. It was a favor. You’re undoubtedly aware that favors are usually returned. It’s called ‘quid pro quo’ in Latin, I believe.”
“Very impressive.”
“Thank you. A time may come when you’ll be asked to return the favor. The gentleman who asked me to call says to tell you he expects a thoughtful response. And in the meantime look at it this way: Someone in Bangkok will be keeping an eye out for you. Not much point in being owed a favor by someone who’s dead, is there?”
“Not unless you’re very patient.”
“And he wants you to redeposit his money. He’ll work out a wire transfer to a safe account.”
“Can’t do it,” Rafferty says. “It’s gone.”
“What? All of it?”
“Pretty much. Got a few hundred left.”
“What did you do with it?”
“Paid some hospital bills. Gave a bunch of it to some street kids and to the children of a reporter who got killed. Oh, and I bought a baby.”
“The man who asked me to call you is not easily amused.”
“What can I tell you? It’s all true.”
“Well,” the man on the other end says, “looks like you owe us a bigger favor than we thought.”
“Looks like,” Rafferty says. “So that’ll give him an extra reason to worry about my safety.” He thinks for a moment and then says, “Interesting how quickly another Isaan businessman stepped up to the plate, isn’t it? Politically, I mean.”
“Times are changing,” the man says. “We all have to change with them. Just remember, you owe us a favor.”
The man hangs up.
Rafferty puts the phone into his pocket and stands there, looking in through the window at the bright room, at the people assembled to remember someone whose life was faithful and compassionate and good. Like, he thinks, 99 percent of the Thai people. Like Boo’s kids will be, if they get a chance.
Standing near the window, on her own at the edge of the crowd, her hands folded in front of her, is Miaow. Without discussing the situation with either Rose or Rafferty, she has apparently made a decision. She wears the “schoolsiest” dress she owns, and yesterday she bought a hair rinse that would emphasize her new highlights. Her hair is even redder than it was before. She does not look toward Boo or Da.
She’s tough, Rafferty thinks. But that doesn’t mean she can’t break your heart.
The front door opens, and a group of people emerge, calling out words of parting. There is a general movement inside, people getting ready to go back to their lives. Soon enough, Rafferty knows, Arthit will be left alone to spend the first night in this house without Noi by his side. To begin something new.
IT’S ON THE coffee table, centered in front of him, still sealed. The side of the envelope that told him not to come into the bedroom is facedown, revealing the sealed flap. Kosit stands to one side of the sofa and Rafferty to the right. It seems wrong somehow for them to come too close to him right now.
Arthit looks up. He says, “Well.”
“Well,” Rafferty says. The look on his friend’s face makes him want to burst into tears.
Arthit breathes deeply, leans forward, and uses both hands to pick up the envelope. As he does, Da comes into the room, stops suddenly, and then goes to Rose and whispers something to her.
“What?” Arthit says.
“Oh,” Da says, blushing scarlet, “it’s…um-”
Rose tells him, “She says there’s someone sitting next to you.”
Arthit’s eyes go to Da. He blinks as though to clear his vision, and then he says, “Thank you.”
He opens the envelope.
BANGKOK MAN ARRESTED IN BABY-SELLING SCHEME
Exclusive to the Sun by Floyd Preece
A Bangkok businessman with alleged ties to the underworld was arrested yesterday by Bangkok police on charges of running a complex and highly profitable operation that purchased, and in some cases stole, infants in order to sell them to wealthy foreigners.
Wichat Kangsomthong, 57, was taken into custody at his offices on Sathorn Road in Bangkok’s Yannawa district. Police officials acknowledged that the arrests were in part a reaction to two earlier stories in the Sun detailing the sale of babies at costs in excess of 1.2 million baht to foreigners, mostly European. The infants, both Thai and Cambodian, were taken from their birth parents and given temporarily to beggars who were “protected” by Mr. Wichat’s syndicate.
In addition to facing charges of kidnapping and enslavement, Mr. Wichat is being investigated for violations of international human-trafficking laws because some of the children were allegedly transported across borders. Some of these charges carry the potential of life imprisonment.